


Anima

by Phantomhill



Series: Invocare [3]
Category: Lucifer (TV)
Genre: AU, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Hell, Some Plot, some anarchy, sort-of case-fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-15
Updated: 2019-01-27
Packaged: 2019-09-19 17:23:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 22,467
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17005923
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Phantomhill/pseuds/Phantomhill
Summary: Tired of Hell, Lucifer decides to go visit his favorite detective. Unfortunately for Chloe Decker, Lucifer drops in just as she receives a case she can't unravel. With a little bit of anarchy in Hell, a serial killer, a few gallons of coffee, and some valid concerns from Dan, this week's case might not be as regular as any of them expect.





	1. Chapter 1

          Lucifer was bored. That was nothing new, in and of itself; he’d sat his way through long stretches of time when there literally hadn’t been anything, and the past few millennia, although generally more interesting than the Precambrian (not that there had been anything wrong with volcanoes and bacteria), had really only been speckled with bursts of excitement. Lucifer sighed, pacing the length of his throne room.

          He could freeze over Hell today. That was always amusing. Something about watching demons scurry about trying to find their snowshoes while damned souls were steadily hardening into blocks of soaking incorporeal limbs was infinitely laughable. There was little worse than trying to slosh through snow in slush-filled socks. It was especially effective on the upper levels of the plane where it generally remained hot and the mostly guilty souls had become accustomed to their own climate-controlled tortures. But he really didn’t want to do anything work related.

          The flames around his throne crackled merrily as Lucifer paced through them. He drew pictures in the fine layer of soot which had settled on the granite with the tip of his shoe. There weren’t even any major problems in Hell right now. Certainly none that required his attention, anyway. He’d quashed the latest rebellion last century, reassured his demons that they did not have souls, assigned a few thousand demons to be on-call for upward summons (there’d been an issue with demons being summoned in the midst of their chores), sent Paimon to watch Limbo and Malphas to Treachery, and had Vassago redesign Asphodel so that those who had been poorly sorted and were waiting to be skyrocketed a few planes to Heaven weren’t quite as miserable in their queue. Lucifer was, frankly, tempted to bring Vassago back down to him because the demon made for good company when Mazikeen wasn’t present.

          Mazikeen. Lucifer stopped drawing in the soot. His right hand demon being summoned by a child was the only matter he had within his sights to fix. Lucifer had known that he wouldn’t be able to channel all summons to the legions he’d placed in Limbo without constant supervision, and he’d been more than willing to accept a few upper-tier and lower circle demons randomly disappearing on occasion, but Maze? Evidently, the 108th and the 217th legions weren’t enough for summoning-only purposes in Limbo; Lucifer made a mental note to reassign the 95th to Limbo’s summoning division. He could give the actual order later, when Maze was back.

          But why should he have to wait? The flames at the farthest wall dimmed considerably as Lucifer blankly stared at them. Why should he have to wait for his demon to return? He was the bloody King of Hell; he shouldn’t. He paused, rummaging through his mind to find the connection that linked him to Mazikeen, and brought it out from the organized chaos of his connections with his favorite demons. A good mental tug would be all it would take to cancel the summon and haul her back to Hell. The fire fell into embers. One small tug.

          Lucifer smiled. Why do that? He could go to her. Not a tug, but a guideline—hand over hand, up and out. Hell could run itself for a while. So Lucifer held the connection in his mind and flew himself up a plane.

          It wasn’t a thing of precision.

          He may or may not have become distracted most of the way up, and he may or may not have forgotten about following the connection somewhere in the intermediary plane. In his defense, he did make it within a hundred feet of Maze. He even recognized where he was: the living room of human Detective Decker. That he couldn’t see Maze was no matter. That Detective Decker was pointing a gun at him was of slightly more import.

          “Be not afraid,” Lucifer said, grinning cheekily. Decker aimed her gun at his heart. “I’d prefer if you’d not fire that; you’d ruin a perfectly good suit, which you must admit is quite dashing on me.” He held out his arms and spun slowly so that she could admire Hell’s excellent tailoring.

          “How are you here?” Decker asked, her gun unwaveringly aimed at him. Lucifer looked over his shoulder and hid his bafflement that she wasn’t appreciating his form. Still one of the complicated ones, then. He turned back towards her. “Trixie didn’t summon you.”

          “Of course not.” He closed the distance between them and gently pushed down her gun. Decker resisted, but eventually gave in. “Is that truly how you believe I arrived last time?” Some of the tension in Detective Decker’s shoulders released. Lucifer decided that she likely would not try to shoot him, and released her hands, stepping back a foot. She promptly realigned her gun to his chest. “Detective, if that weren’t a gun in your hand, I would say you were happy to see me.” No reaction.

          “How are you here?” Decker repeated.

          Lucifer sighed. “If you must know, I flew. Now, could you please put that away? It’s a smidge insulting that you believe you could hurt me with that.”

          Decker hesitated, but, in the end, holstered her weapon. She still stared at him with guarded eyes. “Why are you here?”

          “You’ll have to be more specific than that, I’m afraid.” He sat on the top of her couch after ensuring that it had nothing particularly disgusting on it. “In existence, on Earth, in whatever this city is, or in your living room? Do note that I’m not here to answer any existential dilemmas that cannot be solved with the infinite wisdom of forty-two; Adams was right about more than just that.” She simply stared at him. Lucifer kicked his heels against the couch back. “In your living room, then. I’m looking for Mazikeen.”

          “She’s with Trixie.” Decker crossed her arms. “You came all this way for your demon?”

          “Yes, well, I need her to relay an order, and I have no desire to do it myself.” Lucifer glanced into her kitchen. Decker’s phone began ringing. “You wouldn’t happen to have any whisky around, would you?”

          “No.” She answered her phone, keeping her eye on Lucifer even as she listened. Lucifer watched her just as intently. She was a funny human, surprisingly complicated, and quite pleasant on the eyes, not that he’d been having success luring her to bed. Or to the couch, wall, table, shower… “Yeah. Okay. I’ll be there in a few minutes.” She hung up and put on her shoes.

          “Where are you off to, Detective?” Lucifer asked, standing from the couch.

          She eyed him. “Work.” So succinct. He could admire that.

          “What does this work entail?” He followed her to the door, sneaking in front of her and holding it open. She hesitated before leaving her home. “Something exciting?”

          “A crime scene.” She locked the door, not fully turning her back on Lucifer. Had she any reason to fear him it would have been a wise decision. “Don’t you need to go find Maze?” She didn’t walk any farther.

          “I have an eternity, Detective.” Lucifer looked around, squinting slightly in the sudden sunlight. It was pleasant out, not too hot, not too cold. The sun was thoroughly warming the Earth, and it’s heat was being radiated off of the pavement up to him. The air itself was relatively clear, although it was evident that wherever the Detective lived was heavily populated. The rumbling noise and oily smell were proof enough of that. “Where is this crime scene?”

          “Lucif…” she fizzled out.

          “Lucifer,” he helpfully supplied. He looked upwards, towards his star. It was almost directly overhead but offset slightly towards the East. “Do you have a spare pair of sunglasses? I forgot to add a dimmer when I lit that.”

          Decker closed her eyes and inhaled and exhaled deeply. “L-lucifer.” A bit of a stutter, Lucifer noticed, but they could work on that. “You’re not coming with me.”

          He raised an eyebrow. “Oh? Why not?” Decker crossed her arms again.

          “It’s a crime scene.” She shuffled her weight from foot to foot, and Lucifer frowned. “You’re not allowed in.”

          “Am I making you nervous, Detective?” Lucifer asked. He moved, so that his back was to the sun and the Detective was effectively standing in his shadow. She’d been squinting, too; it seemed as if she’d forgotten a pair of sunglasses. Decker swallowed, even though she kept her face level and devoid of emotion. “Oh.” It was more than enough to answer the question. “I see.” Of course she was scared of him. She had every reason to be, and every reason was justified. Lucifer adjusted his cufflinks. “I’ll… I’ll be going, then.” He turned and began walking away. Back to Hell and boredom. Maze would be back in a few days anyway.

          “Lucif—” she broke herself off. “Wait.” Lucifer paused and turned to face her. “Look, I didn’t mean—” she paused again. “Look, I’m scared of you because you’re the literal Devil. You could hurt me, or Trixie, or anyone here with barely a thought, and I’m scared of that because there’s nothing that I could do.”

          “Yes, I understand.” It was a perfectly rational fear because it was grounded in reality. Everyone he knew feared him, so why should there be any exception? So much for complicated. He offered Decker a half-smile. “It was good talking with you, Detective.”

          “Wait.” She almost grabbed his arm. “Listen. This crime—it’s a murder.”

          “You did say you were in homicide,” Lucifer reminded her. She’d mentioned that just as she was beginning to lose to him during the first time around the board in Monopoly. She’d also hastily clarified that statement, feeling the need to specify that she didn’t commit homicide, as if she had to justify herself to him.

          “Yeah. Um.” She blinked. “So, apparently, it looks like a summoning gone wrong, but Dan thinks there’s something else. Dan’s—”

          “Your ex-husband. I do have a painfully excellent memory, Detective.” She’d brought Daniel up when she became aware that Lucifer had been flirting with her, but Lucifer had already heard of him through some of Daniel’s more prolific summons.

          “Okay. Yeah. So, Dan thinks it’s something else. He’s going to probably summon someone later, but—well, you’re here, and probably you would know, so… I mean, if you want to, you could maybe…” She trailed off again. Lucifer waited for her. She sighed. “Do you want to consult for this one?” There. Took her long enough.

          Lucifer grinned. “With pleasure, Detective. I always enjoy pursuing a murderer.” He gestured towards the street. “Which vehicle is yours?” Decker blinked, then pointed vaguely towards her car. Lucifer began towards it, the Detective trailing after him. “What of your fear of me?” He unlocked it before she could draw her keys. Her response was another breathing exercise.

          “Still there. Not going away. But—” she cut herself off, gathering her thoughts and wandering to the driver’s side of the vehicle to enter it. “But you also haven’t hurt anyone. And, well. I don’t know. I guess I’ve just seen a lot of bad people.”

          “So what’s one more in the mix?” Lucifer asked, shutting his door.

          “No.” Decker started the vehicle. “You just don’t seem… bad.” She started driving. He didn’t seem bad? Lucifer peered at her. She was steadfastly looking forwards, at the road, watching traffic and trying to ignore him. She had a beautiful profile, Lucifer decided. And a beautiful sense of naïve morality.

          “I suspect you’ll reconsider,” he said at last. Detective Chloe Decker said nothing.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, all!  
> Finals week is a masterful way to finish a story that you set aside at the end of the summer. Whoops.  
> Constructive criticism is always welcome, so if you have any pointers or notice any errors, please let me know! The same goes for tagging, especially warnings.  
> Posting will be once a week on Saturdays.  
> Also- the last two stories in this series have been predominantly about Maze and Trixie, but I couldn't quite find a way to fit their friendship into this meaningfully. Trixie does not appear in this (sorry). I'm also working under the idea that Lucifer is more powerful than he lets on in the show. It doesn't come up much, but fair warning.


	2. Chapter 2

Chloe parked at the crime scene. She was doing well, she thought to herself. She’d made it through LA traffic with the Devil riding shotgun. Not that the Devil had been very talkative. He’d just sat there, staring out the window, watching cars and structures and signs fly by and occasionally half-heartedly flirting. Sure, Chloe didn’t exactly know what he was doing up here, or what he wanted, or even what species he was (was devil a species?), but from the little interaction she’d had with him, he seemed uncharacteristically quiet. He couldn’t really be that insulted that she was scared of him, could he? She’d explained; he’d agreed. He’d been willing to leave. And then, of course, something had possessed her to stop him. Chloe unbuckled. Probably the thinly veiled hurt that had masked his expression like a thick layer of molasses. Or one of his demons, because that would make just as much sense right now.

Lucifer followed her a moment later, apparently having just realized that they’d parked. He hadn’t been so imposing in the car, but now that he was standing again… it was odd. Chloe wouldn’t call herself a pessimist, but she was realistic. If he were going to hurt her, or damn her to Hell or whatever, he’d had ample time to do so on the drive. Instead he’d sat there making himself as unobtrusive as possible. He was the Devil. By all rights, ‘unobtrusive’ shouldn’t have been possible for him. And, if Chloe were being honest with herself, the fact that he could mask his presence to be only as noticeable as a lower tiered demon was far more terrifying than the alternative.

“I must say, Detective, that crime scenes never used to be this crowded.”

Chloe shook herself from her thoughts at Lucifer’s words. There were reporters floating around, civilian bystanders, other emergency services—the usual bustle that accompanied an urban murder. Then, of course, there were the walkers striding with their heads steadfastly down, cyclists deftly reading and drinking while steering, and vehicle traffic honking for no other reason than to mimic a goose in noise and aggression. “This way,” she said, navigating through the populace. One of the new officers was holding off the crowd and patrolling the police line. Chloe flashed her badge at him and gestured to Lucifer. “He’s with me.” The officer nodded and stepped aside. He didn’t look at her badge; his eyes were locked on Lucifer with—huh. Chloe blinked. The officer looked like he was suppressing a crush. Lucifer held the tape up for her and offered the officer a confident smile. “Come on.” She almost had to pull on Lucifer’s sleeve to get him to move from the besotted officer.

Working through the various crime scene investigators, Chloe sighted Dan and changed course to him. People were looking at them as they passed by. No, not them. Him. Chloe swallowed and marched forwards. At least it was better than them staring at her. They did that all the time since Palmetto, and even though she’d been proven right, some of Malcom’s friends wouldn’t spare her the time of day. She still didn’t have a partner because of them.

“Dan,” Chloe called. Dan looked up, shooting her a quick smile, before he stood from his crouch and his eyes, like everyone else’s, slid past her to her tall shadow. The smile that was on his face fell. “This is…” It was hard to say his name. Her mouth kept going dry, and then becoming too moist, and then returning to dry.

“Lucifer, the Morning Star,” Lucifer said for her. Chloe nodded. Dan paled. Lucifer smiled, although it was far less pleasant than what he had been directing at the guarding officer. “A dubious pleasure, Detective Douche.”

“What?” Dan startled from his bloodless state.

Lucifer put his hand on Dan’s jacket-clad shoulder. Just as people had been drawn to stare at him, Chloe was overwhelmed with the urge to look away. To run away. Dan impossibly paled more and stopped breathing. “Some grand exploits you’ve had with Paimon, I’ve heard. He hasn’t had that much fun in centuries. Although—and I fear he may have inherited this from me—he does have this nasty tendency to manipulate his debtors.” Lucifer clapped his shoulder solidly, and Dan almost collapsed from the force. “I’m sure you’ll be fine. Now, what’s this about a murder?”

If emotions could be a physical force, Chloe would have fallen from the whiplash snapping from Lucifer. Jovial, to moping, to flirting, to threatening, to whatever the hell this was. She shook her head. Further, he was back to pretending to be little more than a demon. Noticeable, but normal, and with the same expressional range as sauerkraut. He spied the body and swept across the pavement and the gore to it.

Chloe weighed her options. She could remain with Dan and wait for him to return to coherency, or she could go with Lucifer and try to dissuade him from doing anything… devilish. Dan wasn’t doing so well. He had finally remembered to breath, but that was about as far as Chloe could see. But Ella was over at the body. And Lucifer was going to the body. And, well, Dan would have to manage for a minute.

“We’ll talk later,” Chloe said. She wasn’t sure if Dan actually heard her because he was still bloodlessly staring at the ground. He’d maybe be okay. She almost sprinted to Lucifer, noting the intricate swirls and circles in a variety of materials wreathing the ground, and just caught up with him as he reached the body. Damn his long legs. She supposed they already were.

Ella turned to them as they arrived, her gloves not yet on. She must have arrived a few seconds after them. “Chloe!” Ella leapt into Chloe’s arms, a bundle of immovable energy, and Chloe found herself distractedly returning the hug. Ella backed away to give her just enough space to turn to Lucifer. She appraised him, seemed to come to some cheerful conclusion, and exclaimed, “And new guy!” Oh crap.

“Ella!” But Chloe was too late.

Ella launched herself at Lucifer, encapsulating him in one of her famous hugs. Lucifer stiffened. Breathe, Chloe. In. Out. It was, fortunately, a short hug.

“Ella Lopez.” She released Lucifer to crouch down and opened her forensics kit to snap on a pair of gloves. “You must be the infernal consultant.” Chloe held in her sigh. Only Ella would knowingly hug a demon. Devil? Angel? Whatever.

Lucifer was still stiff, watching Ella as she began looking over the body. “Yes,” he said after a few more seconds, “I suppose I am.” Oh man, she was going to have to do the paperwork for this one. Chloe could see it now: ‘Name of summoner: Trixie Decker; Name of summoned: Lucifer; Summoning method: Pancakes; Resident: Hell; Species: Devil; Specific Job: King of Hell, Adversary.’ She blinked. This was too damn distracting. There was a dead body at her feet, and she was thinking of paperwork. Right.

Chloe couldn’t tell if it was a man or a woman that lay before her. Their ribcage had been blasted outwards from the inside and scattered portions of their body, from their pelvis to their cheeks, had been blown around the site. The body was Caucasian, brunette, approximately 5’7”, and unclothed. No identifying marks survived the explosion. Nor did the blood. While the solid gore was spattered throughout the intricate summoner’s design, there was no blood spray originating from the body.

“It’s gonna take me a few minutes to find anything other than the obvious,” Ella said, manipulating the body’s head. Of course.

“Yeah. Okay. No Ray-Ray today?” Chloe looked around at the rest of the scene, belatedly noting the low and grey buildings surrounding them and the stink of the city. They were standing right next to a sewer drain which people had been using as a trashcan for at least the past week.

“Nah.” Ella shrugged. “You know how she is around non-humans.”

“Who is this ‘Ray-Ray’?” Lucifer asked. Apparently, he had recovered from his shock at being hugged. “Not an angel, I presume?”

“Nope.” Ella pushed what remained of the head forwards some, to see the back of the victim’s neck. “She says she’s a ghost. But I think she was killed in a summoning gone wrong, too, so she always poofs out when she realizes that we have to summon someone.”

“An unfortunate way to die,” Lucifer acknowledged. It almost sounded like he’d seen it first-hand. Chloe decided that he probably had, what with a majority of summoning-related deaths occurring from trying to summon him.

“Mm. Oh, hey, this is something.” Chloe crouched at Ella’s exclamation, hovering off of her friend’s shoulder. Lucifer likewise stooped to get a better view. Chloe did her best to ignore that fact that she was close enough to feel the heat coming from his body as they both tried to see what Ella was pointing at. “See that slash?”

“Ah.” Lucifer reached forward and removed the head from Ella’s hands, pushing it farther forward than any normal human head had right to go. Chloe steadfastly ignored the lump making its way up her throat. “They were paralyzed.”

“Gloves,” Chloe ordered. Ella nodded, although she didn’t seem as perturbed by the now-unnatural angle of the body’s neck. Lucifer scoffed.

“Do you force every denizen of Hell up here to wear gloves for a bit of gore?”

“Yes.” Chloe didn’t hesitate in her answer. Lucifer’s brow shot up, and he laid the head back on the ground.

“Part of the arrangement Dan worked out with Paimon,” Ella supplied, offering him a pair of gloves. “Paimon’s legions wear gloves on crime scenes so soul blood and Sulphur doesn’t get everywhere. No offense.”

“I assure you, I’m clean in that respect.” He wiped his fingers on a rag from Ella’s kit and stood. “No Sulphur, no blood, and certainly no other… exciting fluids.” He winked at Chloe. Breathe in, breathe out.

“Paimon’s rule: still gotta wear the gloves.” Ella shook them at him with one hand, while with the other, she continued to pore over what remained of the body. Lucifer rolled his eyes.

“Don’t push it, Ella,” Chloe whispered, eyeing Lucifer. Ella offered her a confused look. Lucifer became bored of their interaction and wandered over to one of the intricate designs. When he was outside of respectable hearing range, Chloe continued, “he’s a lot higher up than Paimon.”

Ella’s smile fell for a moment, and her hands froze on the body’s shoulders. “What do you mean?” They were both watching him as he paced the lines drawn on the ground. Other techs and officers all halted what they were doing as he passed to stare after him. “He doesn’t feel as intimidating as Paimon, or even some of the lower demons.” She must have arrived after he’d turned Dan into a sheet. Thinking of, it appeared that Dan was at the very least running on automatic again; he was, like Lucifer, walking the pattern. They were due to collide in a few feet if one of them didn’t look up.

“I’ll explain later, okay?” Chloe stood and got over to Lucifer and Dan as quickly as she could without stepping on any evidence. She managed to put herself between them just before they collided into each other. Dan startled when he bumped into her. Lucifer’s reaction was far less polite.

“A threesome, Detective?” Oh, crap. Chloe backed away and into Dan, managing to force herself an inch removed from Lucifer. “I hadn’t thought you would be so forward, but I’m happy to oblige, even if part three is a smidge wan. I would remedy that soon enough.”

“What?” Dan said, coming to his senses.

Lucifer grinned. “It is called a devil’s threesome for an excellent reason.”

“No.” When had her life become so messed up? Chloe pushed Dan back another foot to give herself some more space. “No threesomes,” she clarified. “No sex. No flirting. No foreplay. Instead, crime scene.” She turned from Lucifer to Dan. “What do you have so far?”

“Uh.” Dan shook his head some, furrowing his brow. “Yeah. It’s complicated. Really complicated. I mean, it looks like that the summoner managed to combine fourteen individual demons’ symbols into a coherent pentagram. In the middle, near the body,” Dan said, pointing at some red lines by Ella, “that’s the symbol for wind, and the one below it, that’s for fire.” He shrugged. “My best guess is whoever that body was trying to bring up one of the higher demons, couldn’t decide which one until the end, and they failed. I won’t know which one they chose till we figure out what kind of blood this is drawn in.”

“Well, that’s easy, Daniel,” Lucifer said. Dan cringed at the direct address. Lucifer stooped to the nearest line, dragged his finger over the surface of it, and stuck it in his mouth. Dan gaped. The lump Chloe had been ignoring steadily rose higher in her throat. Breath. Remember to breath. “Human.” He wiped his finger on his pocket square. “Mixed with a bit of raven.”

“Man, not cool.” Dan grimaced.

“Please don’t taste the crime scene,” Chloe said. She had to say that. She actually had to say that.

“Does that go with the gloves rule?” Lucifer asked. And it was an honest question. It was an honest-to-God innocent question.

Chloe shook her head. “It’s just a general… rule.”

“Yeah,” Dan agreed. “But, um, pretending I can erase that from my mind, if it’s raven and human, then it sounds like the vic was trying summon Malphas.” Malphas..?

Lucifer must have noticed her blank look. “I have Mal operating Treachery right now—Floor Nine, if you will. He’s not the most pleasant of company, but exceptionally loyal, and most unwilling to work with humans.” He paused, remembering something. “He also has an exceedingly creative tongue.”

“We didn’t need to know that,” Chloe said. She really didn’t. Time to focus on something else. Dan seemed to be recovering from his shock well enough, and Ella was still at what remained of the body. Various technicians were still running about photographing things. Otherwise, the area was completely still—unusual, even on the outskirts of the city. Not the area, Chloe corrected herself, as there were still the usual cyclists and runners and vehicles, but the air.

“Generally,” Lucifer said, apparently ignoring their unwillingness to know about the more intimate qualities of Malphas, “loathe as I am to admit it, I would agree with Daniel in his assumption that the exploded bloke tried to summon Mal, but then we’d be ignoring the anima of the place, and as detectives, I can’t have you doing that.” He smiled, cheeky. “I’m a conscientious Devil.” Of course.

“What d’you mean?” Dan asked. He wasn’t referring to the ‘conscientious’ statement.

“Our summoner was not attempting to summon Mal, the old feathered dildo; our summoner summoned a human spirit.” Someone tried to summon a human spirit. “Successfully, I might add—if a bit more explosively than usual. Which, of course, means that the body there is not our summoner.”

“Wait, human summoning?” Dan frowned, crossing his arms. “Look, and with as much respect as I can muster for you so you don’t up and smite me, that’s not possible.”

Over at what remained of the body, Ella and another tech were putting it into a bag, the dance a bit awkward as they had to avoid all the other chunks of gore. Most of said chunks were in the process of being bagged by other techs. If all the lines drawn on the ground were in blood, then that explained why the body hadn’t bled. It also meant that the body had been purposefully exsanguinated before the summoning, which meant that Lucifer was correct that the body wasn’t the summoner, which also meant that the summoner probably paralyzed the person, killed them through exsanguination, and then used their body for a ritual. The murderer was still out there.

“It certainly is possible. You must have noticed how Asphodel and Limbo are on the same floor, and the former has greatly lacking security.”

“I’ve never actually been to Hell,” Dan said.

“Yes, although it was touch and go there for a while.” Lucifer sighed. “Regardless of your moral quandaries and your debatable summoner’s status, it is possible to pull a soul from Floor One and return them to this plane, complete with intact physical and mental facilities. The key component is that wind and fire combination you see there.”

“But…” Dan shook his head. “For a full body, you’d need—”

“Earth and water, as well as an eclectic assortment of other materials. I’m well aware, Douche.” Lucifer looked to the sun, as if he was trying to draw whatever patience he’d had when he created it back to him. “The soul, you may have noticed, is far less wholesome. It needs that spark of heat, the little burst of energy and chaos, to create itself from the wind; the soul is sporadic, a fickle bit of imagination and _passion_ and will. And what better representation for something as forceful and wavering than that?” He gestured towards the central symbols. The body had been cleared off of them, leaving their drying red blood easily visible to something as naked as the sky.

“If this is a human summoning,” Chloe said, thinking out loud, “then who did they summon? And who’s ‘they’?” Both Dan and Lucifer looked at her.

“Isn’t that your job, Detective?” Lucifer offered her one of his smirks, which practically seemed to be defaulted onto his face. “If you’ll excuse me, I believe Maze has returned to Hell.”

“Wait.” Chloe stopped him before he could do whatever he was about to do to disappear from there. “You’re consulting on this case, so I need to be able to contact you.”

“Chlo,” Dan said. He used the same tone he used with Trixie when he didn’t agree with whatever their daughter was doing. Chloe ignored him.

“Why, of course, Detective,” Lucifer purred. Chloe hadn’t thought it was possible for a grown man to purr, but he managed it. “If there were decent cell reception in Hell, I would happily accept your number. Reception’s rather torturously slow down there, unfortunately, as well as internet; it is Hell. You’ll have to send a message through either Mazikeen or Vassago.” Vassago? It looked like Dan knew who that was. She would ask him later.

“And if I can’t reach either of them?”

“It almost sounds like you want to see me.” Chloe’s silence she hoped was answer enough. Lucifer pouted, then gave her an exaggerated sigh. “Very well. I’ll fly up in a few days to check on your status. Until then.” He shot a mock salute towards her, rolled his shoulders, and disappeared with a ruffling sound. Chloe stared at where he just was.

Dan swallowed. “So, angel, then.”

“Mm.” She looked at her ex-husband, taking in his profile. “We need to talk.” He nodded, still staring straight ahead at where Lucifer had been. “But crime scene first.” Yeah. Crime scene first.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter two, as promised. Chapter length is going to average 3000 words or so from here on out.  
> As always, constructive criticism is very welcome! Suggestions and found errors help me improve.  
> Until next week-


	3. Chapter 3

It wasn't the darkest day Lucifer had seen in Hell. But, and this might be on account of the hordes of panicking demons racing towards the comfort of the stratosphere's fire, it wasn't exactly the brightest. One of the few demons with wings was struck by another's weapon, and it fell to crash onto the stony surface next to Lucifer. He eyed the twitching creation.

"It's like this on all floors," Mazikeen growled, kicking the fallen demon. It whimpered before Lucifer vanished it. Lucifer had sent Mazikeen to go scout around for the source of the problem when he'd flown back into his throne room and discovered relative anarchy at his seat. "Vassago and Paimon are barely holding the first wall." Barely, perhaps, but those two would hold it. Lucifer hadn't placed them on the uppermost floors just for their sunny dispositions.

"Of Malphas and Azael?" Lucifer asked, naming the rulers of the two lowest floors of Hell. Another falling demon catapulted towards him, but Lucifer flicked it away like he would a fly and not a winged rhinoceros. It crashed horned-nose first into a pillar and laid still. "Their floors are still intact, I presume?"

"Reasonably, but both are unamused." Maze roundhousye kicked a demon who had surged towards Lucifer, sending it to the same place as the rhino. "The Lilim have Dis secured, and Bael, Asmodeus, Balam, and the hounds have the personal hells and their individual floors contained. No one has escaped. Beleth and Belphegor have not reported in."

"Very well." Beleth's loss was entirely more unexpected than Belphegor's, although what with the present chaos, Lucifer wouldn't be surprised if Beleth was going to attempt to take the throne. If Lucifer had thought the demon were just and fair in his punishments, he would happily give the damned chair to the demon. As it was, Beleth was not fair in any stretch of the word, and Lucifer would much sooner bequeath the rule of Hell to Belphegor even though she would inspire an intrepid sense of laziness among the hordes. "Vine and Purson?"

"Purson is fortified, although two legions of Heresy residents have escaped to join the anarchy." Watching demons plummet through the red-tinged atmosphere was actually rather beautiful in its own way. Although, the screams and constant noise were less so. They made it awfully hard to hear Mazikeen. So Lucifer muted all of Hell save for himself, Mazikeen, and those few demons he knew remained loyal to him. The monumental hush was entirely unnatural. Maze flipped her knives. "Vine, the treacherous snake, is attempting to kill you." Yes, well, that wasn't exactly new.

"I presume, then, that the majority of the attackers are from Violence?" There were human souls among the demons, wandering around the silent grounds and attempting to pursue their tormentors. They did appear to be vaguely allied with certain demons, presumably those loyal to Vine.

"Correct." Maze stabbed another plummeting demon. This time, when it crashed into the stone, the impact made no sound. "The primary defendants on the field are Zymamar's. Corson remained behind to restore order to what remains of Violence." Lucifer turned a handful of human souls racing towards him and Mazikeen with crude weapons of repurposed demon parts to flame. Mazikeen growled again as she was hit full force with their ashes. "You could end this."

"Of course." A red dragon flew overhead, breathing fire down onto the ground, and Lucifer smirked. It was always a pleasure Vassago's familiar at work. He imagined the explosion that followed when the burst of flame hit the ground and scorched the rebelling souls and demons. "But would Hell be Hell without a war?" It was a rhetorical question, and Maze did not answer. She would enjoy the fight once he unmuted it; as Lilith's firstborn, that was what she was made for, and that was what she was best at.

The dragon barreled into a few winged demons, tossing them aside and out of the air so they fell like hail. "What caused this?" Lucifer asked, enjoying the light show. A lion bodied griffin joined the dragon in the sky fighting with it against the masses.

"Don't know." She eyed a squad running away from them onto the silent battlefield, exposed jawbone and sinews working as she ground together her teeth. She would have to wait before she could partake in the fight, however.

"Follow me," Lucifer said. Mazikeen nodded sharply. Lucifer returned volume to the battlefield, noting the shock the sudden noise had on a majority of the combatants. Otherwise, he ignored the fight. Hell without a smidge of anarchy was hardly Hell at all. Besides, he'd been bored, and a bit of intrigue never failed to amuse him. Who would try to take the throne next? Who would remain loyal? Who would betray him? It was a jigsaw puzzle of demons and the odd human soul, and no matter the number of times Lucifer let this occur, the outcomes were always different. He knocked another comet of a demon out of his path. Intrigue, excitement, and mystery, too; he hadn't begun this battle. He hadn't painted the pieces this round. So there did lie the question: what had?

Lucifer felt around in his mind for the connection linking him to Vassago. Finding it, he pulled himself towards the demon, flying metaphysically upwards into Floor One. He landed on the first wall of Hell and pulled Mazikeen to him.

Dividing Asphodel from Limbo, the first wall was not, contrary to popular belief, particularly grand. It was designed to allow traffic, be it soul, demonic, or human, to pass through its gates. As such, it had this nasty tendency to half fade during low-traffic times. This was not a low traffic time.

"My Lord," Vassago greeted. "Mazikeen." Vassago's form resembled one of Lucifer's siblings, save for the lack of divinity and the mutilated wings. In respect of the later, he mimicked Lucifer. The demon offered the both of them a cheerful grin, before spearing a demon from a lower floor who had been trying to escape. "It's good to see the both of you again."

Lucifer nodded. "And you, Vassago." Next to them, Mazikeen wrestled a gigantic chicken octopus off of the wall and threw it into Lethe flowing darkly below. "I always love when you show me your dragon."

"Usagoo's great, isn't he?" Vassago pulled a feather free from one of his wings and hurled it at some flavor of gecko demon attempting to climb the wall. It pierced the gecko's eye and exploded. "Hah, got it." He fluffed the bloody remnants of his disintegrating wings. "You're always welcome to see more than just my familiar, sir, you know. I'd be happy to show you a future where things have become much closer between us."

"Unfortunately, Vassago," Lucifer said, chuckling, "your futures always end up poorly."

Vassago shrugged. "We could always change that."

Mazikeen appeared behind Vassago, roaring as she charged a small handful of demons. She dismembered them with her knives without them scathing her skin.

Vassago sighed and stretched his wings. "Okay, then; not today. I guess you want to know what I know about this?" He waved a hand vaguely around himself. Lucifer nodded. "Well, I can tell you that whatever it was, and I think it was some type of summon, it punched a hole through my wall, flew past Paimon—and he's pretty pissed about that right now, let me tell you, sir—and it seems to have teleported itself down a few floors."

"How many?" Lucifer asked.

Vassago held up both hands. He was missing one of his fingers. "All nine. Malphas's blocking me from seeing what it took, so I don't know why it went down that far. We have three perfectly good legions for summoning right here, and all the humans worth bringing back are here, too. Down that far, they're all just… bleugh." With one of his wings, Vassago pointed towards the far side of the wall. "And all mine are all there—not a single soul missing."

Asphodel, in comparison to Limbo, was picturesque in its stillness. A few souls meandered about unworried by the occasional burning demon that fell their way. Even from the top of the wall, Lucifer could see the glowing restaurant pagers they held waiting to call them in for a second judgement. On the other side of the wall, Limbo was a proper battlefield like all the rest of Hell.

"Did the summon return this way?" Lucifer asked. He watched as Mazikeen disemboweled a more hominid demon, eyes lighting on the muscles in her back as she forced one of her knives through its gut.

"No, sir." Vassago stabbed another demon between its eyes. "If I were to make a bet, I'd say that the summon left the same way as Dante back in the day. He and Plato are good company, if you're ever up here for long, although their dialogues're normally a bit circuitous."

"I closed that up centuries ago," Maze said. She paused for a moment to catch her breath and wipe the blood from her eyes. "It's sealed."

"I remember," Vassago said. Then, he shrugged, the motion causing a few rotting feathers to fall from him. "But that's the only backdoor to Hell that exists, unless you're the you, sir."

There was a lull in the battle. Clangs of metal on horn and stone on leather faltered and died. Screams stopped falling from battered lungs as their owners collapsed in defeat, and the battle howls of rambunctious demons quieted in their fervor. Everything then resumed when Paimon appeared in the sky and began bombarding the ground with metallic hail and ice-formed daggers.

"He's got style, doesn't he?" Vassago stared wistfully up at the fallen angel tearing through the clouds. Lucifer smirked. It could be that he had reassigned Vassago to Asphodel less for the demon's cheerful nature and more because he and Mazikeen had placed bets on when he and Paimon would finally come to a relationship. "Anything else you're looking for right now, sir?"

"No." Lucifer found Malphas's connection in his mind and grabbed Mazikeen by her shoulder. "Until next time, Vassago." He flew both of them down without waiting for a response.

Floor Nine of Hell was a frozen wasteland. Lucifer landed Mazikeen and himself on the icy surface of Lake Cocytus. Their weight crunched the ice into shards of glass patiently waiting to pierce whomever moved. Before them stood a massive raven, teeth outgrown in its beak, eyes far from avian. The demon affected a human glamour and dropped to his knees in the same breath.

"Lord Lucifer, hail."

"Mal," Lucifer said, granting permission for the demon to rise. Maze didn't offer her fellow so much of a grunt of acknowledgement. Malphas returned her the favor. "I see your battle is under control." There were no screams, no clangs, or bangs, or fear; instead, the ice was stained with layer upon layer of blood, now frozen there by the frigid gusts of wind pouring off of the first demon to ever have made the mistake of betraying Lucifer, itself frozen waist-deep in the lake. Plato and Dante had assumed the silent and monstrous creature was Lucifer himself; they'd been incorrect.

"Everything has been contained, my lord." His voice was hardly a croak, so grating against the wind. "But I see my message has not arrived to you." Both Lucifer and Mazikeen waited for him to continue. "A soul was stolen from Cocytus's waters. It and its summon escaped up the Traitor and from the infernal planes through that very door which Mazikeen and myself so tightly filled. We have, my lord, a traitor in our midst."

"A traitor in Treachery. Poetic." Poetic, but not unexpected. Not uncommon enough to incite the mass anarchy of the upper floors. "You lost a soul, Mal?" That… that was enough to cause panic among the masses. If a soul could escape from Treachery—if a soul could escape from the lowest plane in existence—then what else was possible? More specifically, if a soul could be summoned from Cocytus's ice and spirited out Hell's long-forgotten backdoor, then what else could this summoner accomplish?

"My legions are searching for it as we speak, my lord, and the traitor as well." Malphas cleared his throat, white eyes gleaming. "We shall find them soon."

Lucifer scoffed. "I'd expect so, Mal." He looked to the Traitor, the beast's gnawing mouths salivating around its never ending meals. "Bring them to me." Lucifer grabbed Maze by the shoulder once more and returned them to his throne room without so much as a dismissal to the demon. Treachery was permitted; it was expected. Hell marked time, like any kingdom, in treachery. But losing a soul from the depths of Cocytus? Losing a soul? That was not permitted.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whoo, lot of names in that one. In this AU, I'm imagining Hell as a mash-up between Dante and canon.  
> Comments and constructive criticism are (as always) forever welcome


	4. Chapter 4

Chloe stared at her string-covered murder board. She could feel her eyes glazing over, her coffee tank miles beyond zero, her hands spasming against the cool air of the precinct. Four murders in just as many days. Too many in too few. And so far, all of her work? All of her time and energy and effort and those lives? For nothing.

The killer left evidence. It was overwhelming Ella and all of the other techs—there were mounds of it. Hell, there wasn't even too much evidence. The issue was that none of the evidence meant anything.

Chloe shook herself, forcing herself to look at her board, eyes twitching and hard to still. They had unknown saliva, unknown fingerprints, unknown blood, and even an unmatched bite mark on victim three. They could have destroyed over half the evidence and still have had enough to sentence the perp without question. All the samples matched each other, meaning that the primary link between the murders (other than the deceased) was their murderer. Hence Chloe's murder board. The main question to the upper left was how someone managed to avoid being documented in this day and age, in any form, before killing a string of people. The secondary question was what the dead had in common. That one seemed to have more of an answer than the previous.

All the victims were in their thirties and were anti-summoning religious. So, possible targets included approximately 300,000 people within LA. That did, admittedly, eliminate most of the population of the city, but functionally that data was useless. Chloe was drawing blanks at pinpointing the pattern. She knew Dan was, too, and so was Ella, and so was everyone else who'd glanced at her murder board on their way by. Even the interviews with family members had revealed nothing: no relative had contact with the victims within the past seven months. Chloe leant deeper into her chair and sighed.

It was barely afternoon and the day was already a massive train wreck of open questions with no end in sight. To make matters ever more frustrating, she hadn't been able to properly close the summoning-gone-wrong from five days previous. A talented summoner who didn't mind murder was still running around the city going entirely unpunished, while, if Lucifer had been telling the truth and accurate (and wasn't that just a tad oxymoronic given that he was the Devil?), there was some poor confused soul from the lower levels of hell stumbling around trying not to get run over by a car. Yeah, these past few days had been a mess.

Chloe had tried to get in contact with Lucifer after he'd left. He was the infernal consultant for that case after all, his actual name be literally damned, and she'd fully intended to capitalize on that even if summoning, banishing, and the rest of that lot were normally Dan's pot, not hers. She still knew the protocol. But Dan hadn't been able to reach Lucifer. Hell, he hadn't been able to contact either Mazikeen or Vassago. The former he speculated he couldn't reach because she was simply too high up on the food chain for him. The latter was a different matter: for all intents and purposes, he'd received a busy dial tone. When he tried again, he'd basically seen a sock on the doorknob. Chloe learned that day that Dan, most of the precinct, and a number of the demons on the upper floors of Hell had a betting pool going on as to when Paimon and Vassago would finally get together. Money changed hands far too quickly for Chloe's approval when Dan announced that Vassago wasn't taking visitors.

A blur of red and black marred Chloe's vision, and she blinked. Her cross-eyed gaze had pulled the board too far out of focus for her to distinguish between anything. That's where the case was, right now: too far out of focus. Too blurry to be meaningful, even with mounds of evidence. Chloe would love even a smidge of clarity to help wrangle the meaningless puddles of thoughts drawn out before her. She had to be missing something. Some connection—something so obvious that she managed to lose it, like a pair of glasses on someone's head.

"Hey." Dan set a paper cup of coffee on Chloe's desk. It was afternoon. It was too late for coffee. Chloe drank it anyway. "Anything?" Dan asked, staring at Chloe's board.

She shook her head. "You?"

"No. I'm actually about to bring a demon up here, mainly to see if they can tell me something about human summoning, but I was going to ask if they knew anything about the murders, too." He took a swig of his coffee. "Hey, are we gonna talk about the other day?" Right.

"Oh, God, sorry. I-" She sighed. Because she hadn't actually had time to properly explain why Lucifer was on Earth, or why he was the consultant for the summoning-gone-wrong, or anything; she hadn't even had time to explain to Ella that she'd hugged the Devil and smiled while doing so. Hell, she hadn't had time to fix the holes in the wall where Mazikeen had taught Trixie how to throw a knife. Explaining Lucifer to Dan and Ella was not the highest item on her list of priorities. "Can I explain after? It's nothing bad. Just, I—I can't think right now."

Dan frowned, brow furrowing. "Yeah, okay. Are you okay?" Was she okay? "Did you sleep last night?"

"No." Maybe Dan had a point. Maybe that was why her brain was all sorts of clouded, her caffeine dependency had skyrocketed, and she couldn't find the pair of figurative glasses on her head or the farmhouse at the optometrist's. "But I can't go home. I'm chasing a summoner-murderer and a serial killer and I can't figure out how to identify either of them!" Chloe sank into her chair, chin tilted towards the drop ceiling and eyes closed. It did feel nice, closing her eyes. "Sorry. Just, go ahead. Summon someone."

Dan shuffled, his brown jacket rustling against his jeans. "Chlo, you have to take a break sometime. You can't win all of them." He gently tugged her cup of coffee from her hands, and Chloe let him take it. It thudded mutely on her desk. "Go home. Take a personal day with Trixie."

"No, I can't." Chloe shook her head and forced herself to sit upright. "I made a promise to the families. I can't go back on that." She refused to fail them. Her eyes shot open. What if that's it? "The—the victims. They hadn't talked with their families for over half a year. Why were they estranged?" She swiveled her chair, banging her shin into her desk with a resounding clang, but she ignored it to tear through her interview notes. Dan moved her coffee.

The first victim, Marjorie Potts, had died when her wrists were slashed and both her hands cut off. Sweet, charming, and a delight were the primary adjectives friends had used to describe; her family had said nothing of the sort. Her father had not said a single word, her mother hardly more articulate. Her brother gave the most information. 'She betrayed us,' he'd said. Chloe found the exact sentence in her notes. 'She betrayed us, and the Lord, and we can't forgive her.' Chloe had initially taken that to mean that she'd either sinned or decided to turn away from her family's religion. But what if… Chloe glanced at Dan. What if she'd summoned someone?

Erik Coulson was next. Chloe flipped to the next page in her notes, accidently ripping it slightly in the process. His cousin, the family member who'd been closest with him before they forewent contact, had clutched the cross he wore around his neck which matched the one Ella found that strangled Erik, but he hadn't elaborated on why Erik had been excommunicated.

Third was Soaad DuFrain. Hers was the first family Chloe had interviewed, and hers was the only family who had wept for their daughter's death. They hadn't wanted to push her away. But she had summoned, and she refused to stop, and she refused to apologize even as she prayed daily, and they hadn't been able to forgive her.

The last victim was Peter Gould. The murderer had ripped a door in Peter's throat and bound his dismembered feet into a steeple of prayer. Chloe had found a pocket planner in his coat and determined that he regularly attended church and other worship services. The church he attended was halfway across LA from his family's church, which is actually where Chloe had located Mrs. Sarah Gould, Peter's mother and last surviving relative, and informed her of Peter's death. She'd frowned, stared at the ground, scowled, and said, 'he might've brought up a demon, but he's going to Hell with the rest of his ilk.' She then spat on the ground and walked away.

"The perp's killing summoners," Chloe said, finally closing her notes and reaching for her coffee which Dan had set on the other side of her desk. "He's killing summoners who were still practicing their religion."

"Huh." Dan turned to face her murder board, obviously trying to follow the lines of red string anew. "We should've seen that earlier." Yeah, they should've. Chloe even had the reason for the victims' familial exile on the board. "But how's he finding out about them? I mean, that's not something I'd go around saying in public." So much for finding the glasses on top of her head.

"Maybe he's a… a priest… or he's listening to their confessions?" That sounded weak even to herself. "But DuFrain was Muslim." Furthermore, each victim attended different places of worship, all across town, and all at different times; some of their schedules were almost exactly opposite. Chloe's eyes drifted back to her board, towards a picture of Gould's planner. Chloe stared at it. "What if they all went to the same support group?"

"What," Dan said, "like a Summoners Anonymous?"

Chloe nodded. "They're still practicing, still attending worship." She pulled a dry-erase marker off of her desk and scribbled SA on her board and circled it. "Is there a support group for anti-summoning religious summoners?"

"Probably." Dan shrugged. "I'll take a look, ask around. Maybe Ella found a calendar or something on one of the victim's computers." Yeah. That'd be good. Chloe sipped her coffee, more alert now than she had been all day. "Anyway," Dan continued, "I need to go bring up a demon."

"Mm." Chloe tucked away her files. "Could you bring Lu…" Chloe cut herself off. She couldn't say his name. It kept getting caught in her throat; she used to be able to say it just fine before she met the owner, but now, not so much. "Uh, could you bring him back up here, too?"

"Chlo." That was Dan's dad voice again. "He's—he's him. I mean, he's probably manipulating you, or trying to steal your soul, or something." Yeah, like she hadn't already thought of that. But if she could make it a half-hour in the car with him in the passenger seat without him trying anything except to get into her pants, then he probably wasn't intending to damn her anytime soon. Chloe just had to convince herself of that logic, too.

"I know. But he's the infernal consultant for the one murder neither of us have a direction for right now. I need to talk to him." Dan shook his head. "I'll come with you," Chloe continued, "and I'll ask him to leave as soon as we're done. But I have to talk to him, and you do, too, about the spirit summoning thing." He was still hesitating. Chloe stood, grabbed Dan by the wrist, and tugged him towards the summoning room at the far end of the precinct. He gave in after a moment.

"You know I can't summon him," Dan said, following her around the desks and other officers. "I'm not sure he can be summoned. How good of a person do you have to be to summon the Devil?" He stepped ahead of her, pulling some chalk out of a holder placed just outside the summoning room, and shut the door to the room behind them.

"I know." Chloe stepped back to the observer's section of the oval room, safely inside some basic protective sigil that someone had taped to the floor the other year. If the lighting were even slightly poorer in there she would've lost Dan in his leather jacket to the shadows. "But you can get Paimon, or Vassago, or someone else who might be able to reach him." Dan squatted and began drawing lines and swirls weaving around the pre-painted and slightly scuffed pentagram in his stick of chalk. They only kept the most basic of supplies in the precinct's summoning room: chalk, tape, and a two small tins of paint. Everything else for the more complicated summons had been removed to a storage closet across the way after one too many incidents with suspects breaking free, running into the room, and summoning an angel (and occasionally a demon). Everyone in the precinct had learned the visual way that most angels were not forgiving beings.

Dan stopped chalking in his lines to appraise his work. Chloe had never had any skill with summoning, but she did know some of the more common pentagrams and symbols by heart, mainly from being married to Dan. However, she didn't recognize this one.

"It's for Vassago," Dan explained. He stepped backwards into the middle part of the oval, equidistant between both the summoning pentagram and the protection sigil. "Uh, pro tip: most of the higher demons can be summoned with chalk. Same goes for some of the higher angels, too." Dan shifted awkwardly. "That's how Charlotte Richards got stuck with Amenadiel. Well, that, and 'cause, you know, she's not going up when she dies. Ready?"

Chloe nodded. "Ready."

Dan set his foot on the outside line of the pentagram. He stared at the center of his drawing, tucked his hands into his pockets, and blinked.

The screams made it into the room before the demon. They bounced on the walls, echoing up and down and around through the oval, up through the drop-tile ceiling, but not out. Soundproofed walls came standard in every police station's summoning room.

The demon appeared in the time it took for Chloe to blink. It was a crawling beast, tripedal and alligator like, with a human face oozing blood from its shoulders. As far as demons went, Chloe was honestly rather unimpressed. It didn't even feel imposing like most powerful demons did. Dan removed his foot from the circle as the creature tried to snap at his ankle. Its snout hit the barrier created by the outside lines of the pentagram.

"That's Vassago?" Chloe shouted. The creature's human face caterwauled.

"No!" Dan covered his ears. "Don't know who that is!"

"Can you send it back?" It was circling the pentagram, snapping madly at the air. The human eyes on its back oozed yellow tears.

Dan stuck his toe on the outmost side of the pentagram's paint. The demon's incisors (human incisors, Chloe noted) grazed the air less than an inch from his shoe. Dan blinked. The blink turned into a second, then a third, then his eyes remained closed. The demon threw itself against the barrier.

"Dan?"

Dan stumbled back into Chloe. "Dan! Hey!" What? She caught him before he could hit the wall. "Hey, come on."

"Got it!" That wasn't Dan. The screams broke, their silence filled by sheer presence. Dan used Chloe as support and rubbed his neck. It was almost like what Lucifer had demonstrated at the crime scene. Almost, just less stifling.

Standing over the bloody corpse of the first demon was a second who, at first glance, Chloe mistook for an angel. But angels didn't have blood on their hands, or bones braided into their hair, or rotting wings raining broken feathers.

"Hi, Mr. Dan," the demon said. He shoved the primary feather he'd been holding in his hand like a sword into one of his wings. "And Ms. Not-Mr.-Dan." Not-Mr.-Dan? The not-angel stomped on the human face on the alligator's back, crunching its nose with a sharp snap. "I don't know who this demon was, either. Probably one of Vine's, although could be from lower down, too. There's some anarchy down there, right now." Bit of anarchy? The demon, whom Chloe assumed was Vassago, grinned, revealing that he had perfectly straight teeth. "I had to bring in my lovely Usagoo, and even Paimon's fighting, and you haven't seen Hell and beauty until you've seen Paimon fight."

"I've never been to Hell," Dan said, "no matter what you all think." He cleared his throat. "Also, uh, Chloe, Vassago, Vassago, Chloe." Chloe forced herself to smile at Vassago. She could feel how tight lipped and false it was, but Vassago didn't seem to care.

"Pleasure to meet you, Ms. Not-Mr.-Dan." He bowed slightly, yellow bones weaved into his hair bouncing against each other. Chloe simply held her stretched smile for lack of anything better to do.

"Yeah." Dan hooked his thumbs into his jacket pockets, and Vassago straightened from his bow. "Uh, what did you say was going on in Hell?"

Vassago pursed his lips. "You need to clean your ears, Mr. Dan. I said that Hell's in anarchy. There're three demons trying to claim the throne right now, and so far, they're doing a bang-up job of it."

"Wait," Chloe ordered. Anarchy in Hell, sure, but the throne? "Is Luc…" Oh, God, it was stuck in the back of her throat. "Luci… Lucifer. Is he okay?" Both Dan and Vassago held equal amounts of incredulity on their faces, but Chloe held her ground. Damn it, Lucifer was her consultant for one of her cases, and, well, she was probably going to end up downstairs for this, but he didn't seem like a bad guy. Scary, and intimidating, and one hell of a flirt, but not bad. "Is he okay?" she repeated.

"I… I would imagine he is." Vassago fiddled with a silver ring he wore on what remained of a missing finger. "We would know if he were not." That was not as reassuring as Chloe would've liked. "Still, he hasn't done anything to stop the fighting, so there is an extraordinarily slim possibility that he's not." He tucked his rotting wings closer to his body. "The Prince enjoys watching Hell burn every few centuries, primarily to suss out the traitors and power hungry, but also because he likes the show." Vassago shrugged. "But no one's stupid enough to try to assassinate him. Not when Mazikeen's around, anyway. She'd skewer them." That was actually surprisingly comforting. Chloe crossed her arms and nodded. "Anyway, Mr. Dan," Vassago said, "what did you bring me and this lump up here for?" He kicked the dead demon. It squelched.

"Yeah." Dan said that more for himself than Vassago. "Someone got out a few days ago. Human, but ritualistic. Our… infernal consultant—" he couldn't bring himself to say Lucifer's name either, Chloe noted with a self-appeasing smile—"said that someone had summoned a human soul?"

Vassago blinked. A few more rotting feathers drifted to the ground. They were burning the floor, Chloe realized, and they were turning the burn spots into black sludge. "The body wouldn't have happened to have died around 11:24 Sunday morning, would it?" That's what Ella had said when they'd returned to the precinct: death occurred between 11 AM and noon, although she couldn't narrow it down further. Chloe nodded in sync with Dan. "Ah." The demon bit his lip. "The body—was it nice and still and quietly dead, or was it more like a Pollock?" They had modern art in Hell? Actually, Chloe wasn't surprised by that.

"Exsanguinated and exploded," Dan confirmed.

"Well, fuck." Ah, crap. It was never good when a demon swore. The last time that had happened around Chloe, she'd been working with Dan, and a vacuum tube to Hell opened up in the middle of the precinct. "See, Mr. Dan and Ms. Not-Mr.-Dan, I allow souls to return to Earth from my floor, and Paimon does the same; we are the uppermost layers of Hell and our residents had simply been poorly sorted or had no place to go. We are the only lords to whom Lucifer allows this sort of escapist behavior." Vassago waved his hand and a rough schematic of Hell appeared before him. Chloe grit her teeth and forced herself to ignore the magic. "Beneath us are the true defenses of Hell, beginning with the second wall and the four floors of personal hells." The layers beyond the top glowed green. "From those, while it is possible for a human soul to continue downwards, it's not possible for a soul to return up. That's why Dante and Virgil had to climb all the way down to Treachery before they could escape out the backdoor at the top of the first traitor." Treachery, the lowest portion of the magic schematic, lit up in blue. "We sealed the backdoor, of course, once Virgil returned and mentioned it to me over tea, but Treachery is Treachery." The schematic disappeared. "Someone up here summoned a soul from down there." Vassago shifted. "Someone down there excavated the back door. And now the soul from down there is up here, which means you have a soul who warranted some of Hell's oldest tried-and-true torture methods now running around and there's chaos downstairs." He scratched the corner of his mouth. "Good luck with that."

Vassago fell silent, and neither Dan nor Chloe did anything to break it. So, Chloe summarized for herself, a soul had escaped from Treachery and was now up here. Breathe in, breathe out. Treachery sounded like it was Hell's basement where no one wanted to go. What did someone have to do to get sent to the basement in Hell? Whatever it was (wouldn't being a traitor be too simple?), she was sure she would find out once they found the rampant soul. Probably after it caused unimaginable chaos. Breathe.

Yeah, Chloe would call that worthy of a demon's, 'well, fuck.'


	5. Chapter 5

Lucifer pretended he could not sense the assassin behind him. He pretended he couldn't feel the ear listening around the corner. They hardly taxed his acting abilities, he'd had so many opportunities to practice recently. He stood facing the gravity-trap black outside wall of the lowest of the personal hells, carefully situated in an ash-filled nook hidden from the guard harpies. A mile behind him, invisible through the smoke and trees, towered the first wall of the city of Dis. Ten feet behind him stalked the assassin.

It was a human, he could tell. Lucifer rolled his shoulders and stared up the wall towards the demon-dotted sky. He ought to tell the harpies to polish the stone. No. Lucifer waited as the assassin approached closer. No, he would have the lower-tiered vanquished of this measly rebellion polish it with their non-dominant hand's thumb. As it was, he couldn't see Maze hurtle out from a gateway some distance down the wall and decapitate the assassin. Still, he knew that she had, and he knew that the assassin had been raising a demon bone inches from his neck.

"Get your shit together," Maze snapped. Lucifer turned, and Maze kicked the head football-style through the gate she had come through. The head bounced through and slammed into the door to someone's hell with a blunted thump. "That's the fifth one in the past day! You should have killed her, and you should have killed all the others."

"'Should have', Mazikeen?" Lucifer smirked. "Tell me, what else 'should' I do?"

Mazikeen ran her tongue along her teeth, her jaw working. She turned away and crossed her arms. "I'm saying,  _my lord_ , that you were killing them just fine last time." She stomped on the body's neck. "It's like you can't even sense them." Lucifer held his tongue at the insult. Maze looked back at him, frowning, eyes narrowed. "You can't sense them?"

"Let's not advertise this to the entire plane, shall we?" He cupped her cheeks and drew her close. "Wouldn't it be damning," he whispered, "if this made it to the press?"

"You're impossible," Maze growled. Quite literally, at that, Lucifer noted with some appreciation. She turned away from him and began towards Dis. "Stay with me."

"Why, of course, Mazie." Lucifer strode behind her and affected a pout. "But what about when you're not here?" He wouldn't fly them anywhere, not yet. Not when the ear was following them through the forest of widow-makers. "I cannot follow you when you leave."

"Why not?" she flipped her knives and shoved aside a burned bush. "You've been doing that just fine."

Lucifer bowed the trees to his will and cleared for himself and Mazikeen a meandering trail back to Dis. "I can't simply leave my domain in such anarchy." He shrugged. "Besides, what wish would I have to return to Earth? It's boring."

"Earth?"

She was sneering in distaste, and Lucifer nodded, a pout still plastered on his lips. "You'll be summoned soon, and me following would be done in extreme irresponsibility, wouldn't you agree?"

"You're going to let me be summoned?" Maze spat on the ground and pushed Lucifer against a tree. What remained of the bark was rough through his jacket, and Lucifer frowned. He was fond of this suit. "Lucifer, that's—"

"The right thing to do? Yes, I'm aware. It's horrible. I expect to hole myself up in Dis and deal with insubordination, not that that is much more exciting than humanity's global drama." He should rile Maze up more often—this was quite delightful. He stared at her lips and let his eyes travel down her body. The tailors in Hell were truly marvelous, when you were at the top (or should he say, bottom?). "Now, Mazikeen," he began, firmly enjoying her taut body against his, "while I doubt this tree would be as comfortable as the throne, if this is what you desire, I am certain we could enjoy ourselves."

"Tempting." Maze nibbled at his neck but pulled away. "But you're letting me be summoned." She pushed herself off of him and turned back towards Dis, the whisping and bending of the dried grass the only noise to mark her motion. Lucifer straightened his suit and followed after her. "Why won't you stop the summon?"

"For the intrigue, of course." He grinned and caught up to his demon. "It's like a live-action video game where I am the star; is there anything better?"

"You could die."

"If dearest brother Mikey and all Dad's hordes couldn't manage to off me, does some lowly demon garner a sliver of a chance?" He pouted, holding the expression until Maze saw it and frowned. "You wound me." The back of his mind, home of his connection with Maze and his other more loyal demons, began to fizz and pop. "Ah, I believe your bus is here, return trip: thirteen days. Enjoy your vacation, Mazikeen; you deserve it."

"Lucif—"

Maze popped out of existence and instantaneously appeared on Earth. Lucifer looked upwards, approximating the location of the Decker household, and waved at the fire-streamed sky. The listening ear should have gotten enough of that conversation to provide at least some excitement within the next two weeks. Lucifer avoided looking back to where the listener hid; in fact he avoided looking around him at all, choosing instead to maintain his inclination towards the sky.

He had looked up in a moment of stillness. He smirked. It would be exciting to see how long it lasted, to see who hurtled through his flames first and fell to their treacherous knees, to see who came screaming their fidelity at his feet. Lucifer walked the rest of the way back to his throne room alone.

* * *

He was not disappointed.

First came Vine's assassins. They were a gladiatorial lot, proud and brash with their hell-assigned weapons. Vine himself did not have the bravery to come to the throne, leaving Lucifer alone to ponder the demon's punishment. The assassins were little help with the matter as Lucifer had turned the majority of them into colorful shrubs. The few whose intelligence had survived their leafy propagation had told of Vine's location immediately. As far as a coup went, it was hardly worthy of the d'etat.

Second came a messenger from Malphas, asking if Lucifer would care for Mal and other loyalists from the various floors to accompany him while he waited for Maze to return. News had spread well, it seemed. The listening ear had done its job. Lucifer politely declined and sent the messenger away.

Lucifer's next visitor was likewise unexpected: Vassago strolled through the door practically unannounced and brandishing a handful of feathers yet untouched by gore, save for the usual. Lucifer had been about to be extremely disappointed. 'About to be' was key, however. Vassago quickly explained upon seeing Lucifer's expression that he was there simply to report that he, with Malphas' consent, had sealed the backdoor of Treachery. He also mentioned that a Ms. Not-Mr.-Dan was being very insistent about contacting Lucifer and was wondering, and he quoted, if he was 'okay.' The plucked feathers Vassago held at the ready were because he had encountered a mercenary group (curiously enough, they claimed to be Belphegor's, the laziest of the horde) consisting of invisible demons. He was, in fact, covered head to primary feather in invisible blood.

Fourth to the throne came Beleth. The demon came personally, trailed by a unit of his guard. Sneaking would have been pointless for Beleth, accompanied everywhere as he was by orchestral music. It had been an adapted and jaunty rock song when he entered, and absolute silence when his entourage left. Lucifer had to make a memo to assign someone new to the floor.

Yet for all those visitors, and for all the ones he had hardly paid note to, not a single one would admit to beginning this fight. Demons were notorious for claiming their work, but still, even in defiance, they knew Lucifer had little tolerance for lies. They were honest with their intentions. As honest, anyway, as their natures permitted.

Lucifer was left with three sides of a rectangular puzzle and some of the central filler but none of that last, ever-important edge. The bottom line hung jagged and loose, scattered all about his mind and the plane. Disjointed, that was the word. Senseless.

Even so, so jittery from curiosity, Lucifer sat on his throne, carefully reviewing replacements for Beleth and Vine. Belphegor would receive a pass, as this was the first time she had rebelled, and her champions hadn't made it so far as the throne room.

There were three days left before Mazikeen returned from her summon Earth-side. Three more days until the residents of the infernal plane believed he had protection. It was fascinating how short his subjects' memories were. They respected him—feared him, some of them, worshipped him, all of them (the Romans had it right; the two were so similar)—yet they still believed they could hurt him. Every revolution attempt, half-hearted or not, they conveniently forgot who he was. Who he really was, and what he had done, and what he could do. For the predictability, it was amusing.

Lucifer scribbled his replacement choices on the papers and set them aside with all of his other outgoing mail and grumbled about the lack of internet. He was near about to go and fix it himself. The Silver City probably had perfect internet, faster than light, damn physics. They'd not even had a hand in inventing it, the overgrown pigeons, but  _of course_  they took it, and probably the cell service while they were at it. Or, Lucifer mused, absently eyeing the closed door as yet another entourage approached, they were still using quills and sets of knotted string. Whatever the case, regardless of the Silver City's willingness or reluctance to advance, Hell needed wifi.

The door pulled open, and in a similar fluid motion with which he strode into the throne room and between twin flames, Malphas, in his human guise, dropped to one knee. "Hail, Lord Lucifer." His guard, seven lesser demons, did the same.

"Mal," Lucifer greeted, eyeing Malphas as he and his guard stood. "Do you have an update on your little escapee issue? Because otherwise, I fear the only reason for you to have come here is to kill me, and I know that you're not foolish." And it would be foolish, and it would be probable for anyone else, but this was Mal. In all the millennium Lucifer had known Mal, he hadn't tried to steal positions or favors, instead choosing to rise through the ranks through brutal effectiveness. That was part of the reason he and Maze so disliked each other: Mal challenged Maze's position in almost every way. Of course, Maze was far more pleasant to be around, and infinitely more exciting and intelligent company than Mal, not that Lucifer would ever tell either demon that.

"I do come bearing news, my lord." Malphas clasped his hands in front of himself, while his guard shifted into parade rest. "We have learned the identity and location of the escaped damned." Lucifer waited, muting his annoyance at Mal's need for a dramatic pause. "Robert Damante, of New York City. The damned died December of 2014 during a bout of fratricide, arrived guiltless in Heaven, and was re-evaluated when his loop had him killing his sister and his associates."

Damante. Robert Damante—the name was familiar. Not because of the circumstances of his departure into Hell (poor initial sorting happened more frequently than those heavenly pigeons cared to admit, and hadn't he always said self-condemning guilt was a piss-poor way of going about it, but  _no_. Why listen to him? It wasn't as if punishing souls was his job). "Maze tortured him upon arrival the other year."

"That is correct, my lord." Malphas swallowed a croak. "We have found him in the city of Los Angeles."

"Well, why haven't you gone and gotten him back yet?" Did he need to do everything around here himself these days?

"I dare not leave when my floor is ill at ease."

Lucifer could have sworn he had said the same sentiment to Mazikeen days ago. "And you couldn't send a unit because, what? You're scared they'll scrape their knees?" He rolled his eyes. "This isn't primary school, Mal. This is Hell. I want this soul caught last year."

"I understand, my lord," Malphas said, his head bowed, "but my top unit has accompanied me here to express their concerns to you personally." He couldn't have sent out another unit—nay, another legion—in the meantime? It was one measly little soul, not the apocalypse. Lucifer frowned, the emotion frank and unrestrained. Mal would have done that if he could have done that. "Perhaps you would care to explain, Egyn?" Egyn, presumably the leader of the unit, stepped out of his respectful stance and came to stand directly before Lucifer. He stood unmoving and unspeaking.

"Well?" It was almost staged. "I'm not going to wait all eternity." The other guards came forwards and surrounded the throne in a tight semicircle. Mal was left out of it. Lucifer should have seen this coming.

"It has come to our attention," said Egyn, "that you are unfit to rule this plane. We have bided our time and waited to see change in the management of Hell and have seen none through the centuries, and we have taken it upon ourselves to aid our brethren and liberate ourselves from your chaotic rule." Each demon drew a weapon. Third assassination attempt was the charm, was it? "Not only have you failed to accommodate our desires, under your rule there has been revolution for millennium, including this most recent, sparked by the escape of a condemned soul of Treachery, as well as—"

"Yes, skip the recap and get to the murdering."

The demons all had masterfully blank faces. As a unit, they came closer until each was within sword distance of Lucifer. The seven levelled their hell-forged weapons in perfect union, Egyn's blade the only one as elaborate as it was practical. It was a fine thing, Lucifer decided, that firearms, probably because dear old Dad didn't want them involved in the apocalypse, never worked properly in Hell.

"Do you have any last words, lord Lucifer?" Ah, a polite demon, Egyn was.

"Actually, I do." Lucifer stood. The assortment of blades flicked their way to the space in front of his neck, and Lucifer eyed their handlers. He pushed past and ignored the stinging cuts. "You see, there are still a few issues I haven't been able to work out." He stood with his back to one of the rows of flames. "The foremost of which you can probably imagine: how did a group of lowly demons reopen the back door?"

"This is not a confessional from us, lord Lucifer." The demons reordered themselves to surround him again. Malphas, Lucifer noted, remained where he had spoken, his head bowed in seeming shame but eyes fearlessly focused on them. "You are not at liberty to voice your concerns."

"But that's just dreadfully  _boring_. Where would the universe be without that little bit of difference? That little bit of thought—that's what makes us so not-boring. Even you have your own thoughts, wishes, desires. And, given the opportunity, wouldn't you voice them? Every last one—you can tell me, here and now." Lucifer smiled at each of them. "All of you, what is it you want from this? What is it you desire?"

Already drawn in like Caesar's friends, the effect was almost immediate. Two desired status, a third, fun. Four and five wished for equality, six communication, and Egyn, to serve.

"To serve whom?"

"My master, lord Lucifer." And so there was a grander plan to this set of puzzle pieces.

"They sound like a fantastic master." The group, as a whole, murmured their agreement. Lucifer would need to go ahead and reinstate state loyalty once this was over. Factions and individual loyalties were fine and all, but not ones with lines so clearly drawn. "Not many leaders can convince their men to attempt treason." Again, those hard whispers of consent. "Tell me, all great leaders have a name. Their name must be known to the plane—nay, the universe. He who overthrew the Morning Star, he who orchestrated Hell's eternal darkness; grand titles, but to what name? You wish to tell me. I know you do."

Egyn grinned, his fragile emotionless mask shattering. "The great lord—"

Lucifer looked to his shoulder. The dagger felt like a punch, but its hilt stuck gallantly into the air. Around it trickled blood. Lucifer dabbed at it with his fingers and eyed the liquid in the ambient firelight. He looked past it to the demons, and past the demons to Malphas. Malphas refused to look away.

"I should have expected this." How could he have expected this?

"This would not have worked had you, lord Lucifer."

Lucifer grasped the pommel of the dagger, feeling the clean juxtaposition of his flesh and the blade. He couldn't feel it. Not right now. Still, his shoulder, it hurt.

"Why?"

Malphas pulled another dagger from his clothes and brandished it. Firelight flickered along the obsidian blade edge, and Lucifer reckoned it was the triplet to the one presently using him as a sheath. No, he knew it was its triplet—he'd given Mal those blades himself when he'd commissioned him to preside over Treachery.

"My loyalties are not to the lord of Hell, but Hell itself." Malphas cleared his throat. "Egyn perhaps was too verbose in his speech, but his argument is valid, and recently it has been decided that you are ruling contrary to Hell's foundation." Mal bowed shallowly. "This is not a slight against you, lord Lucifer. This pains me as much as you." It wasn't a lie; Malphas held to what he was saying. Not one that Lucifer could find. The deceit lie centuries in the past. "Die well, lord Lucifer."

Unfortunately, that wasn't what Lucifer planned to do that day.

Egyn and the guards imploded with energy. Lucifer stared at the perfect centimeter ball that remained of them and their matter, unphased by the brilliance of their subsequent supernova. Malphas halted, motions suddenly as still as Cocytus' ice.

Lucifer scoffed. "You forget that I am an archangel, Mal. I hadn't expected that of you, of all demons, but I suppose today is just full of surprises." Lucifer strode back over to his throne and took a seat, vaguely gesturing at the door. A resounding click sounded over the flames as it locked. The dagger was just beginning to properly hurt. It was fortunate that it didn't feel as if it had hit anything major, but he couldn't simply heal himself, and this was a hell-forged blade. Pulling it out would have more consequences without even minor medical attention like bandages than simply leaving it in for now. Malphas, to his credit, held his composure and did not look once at the door.

"Now, as we were discussing before you tried to murder me, Damante was summoned from Cocytus. It is a valid assumption that you reopened Dante's exit?" That missing edge of the puzzle, and it had been there the entire time.

"Yes, lord Lucifer." Malphas coughed and wiped the phlegm from his lips. "I allowed Damante to escape." A damned soul being allowed to escape Treachery was cause enough for attempted revolution, and was distraction enough for further betrayal. It was almost a clever idea, Lucifer could admit to himself. Still, there were pieces missing.

"But you can't free a soul from Hell yourself." His shoulder burned. Not as hot as his fall, not as hot as Hell, but it burned. "Which human did you entice to summon him, hmm? Some poor novice, or someone of greater acclaim?"

"I enacted a deal." Of course, because whatever deal Mal made with some human was more important than their shared history. Lucifer didn't bother restoring his glamour as it fell. He should find someone to patch him up soon. He'd be fine for a bit, but there was a bloody dagger sticking out of his shoulder. "We agreed upon silence."

"You're going to tell me, one way or another, Mal." Lucifer leant forwards, resting his chin in his hands. "I like you, Mal. I would much rather end this cordially."

"I cannot speak." Yes, he had imagined Malphas would say that. What was one more betrayal in Hell? Lucifer smirked. One more betrayal was nothing. Around them, the world burned.


	6. Chapter 6

The past few days had been a wild ride from start to finish.

Chloe's coffee intake had reached escape velocity while her sleep deprivation provided the escape equation's infinity. She'd barely had time with Trixie this week, barely had the energy to throw together some basic food before collapsing, often on the couch. She hadn't made it to her proper bedroom except for changes of clothes. And for all that work, all that effort and devotion, they were only baby steps closer to finding the murderer. Not the original murderer—the one who summoned the serial killer murderer—but the serial killer summoned murderer. She hadn't had a chance to start on the summoner-murderer, and, frankly, the terminology was just as confusing as the entire situation at this point.

The murder board had finally untangled some of its knots with Vassago's help. Dan had looked into possible Summoners Anonymous groups around the city, and, as far as they were able to tell, there was only one whose timeslots fit the availability of all of the victims. Unfortunately, the group took the 'anonymous' aspect of their organization seriously; the paperwork was growing monumental, and nothing was speeding it along, not even two more victims since the initial meeting with Vassago.

Sighing, Chloe pushed herself away from her desk. She needed a good wander right now, or, preferably, some conclusive data. She had to catch whoever was doing this. Somehow, she had to figure this out. Chloe took her wander and meandered through the bullpen to Ella's lab.

"Hey, Chloe!" Ella remained bent over some piece of lab equipment and evidence, although she did offer her a friendly wave. "I know what you're going to ask!" Chloe sat on Ella's stool and waited, hoping some of her friend's energy would navigate her way and reinvigorate her. "You're going to ask me if any of this mess finally will be useful."

"That's about it," Chloe agreed. It did seem to be working, if only slightly. "What do you have?"

Ella withdrew from whatever she was working on to dash across the lab to one of the computers. "Well, I can finally confirm that we're looking at the SA group that everyone went to!"

"That's good." That was good. Really, it was. But it wasn't entirely unexpected. "Good." Maybe the group could finally be convinced to release their member information. "Anything about the perp?"

Some of Ella's exuberance fell. "No. They're a tough cookie to nail down. I mean, dead for who knows how long, stuck downstairs for all that time, and somehow back up here but not in their own body? Their presence interfering with all the identifying factors of their host? Could be anyone."

"Robert Damante."

Holy crap.

Chloe tumbled off the stool to her feet. Ella's energy returned in her record-breaking jump. And Lucifer stood there, straightening his blazer, as if he hadn't just appeared out of thin air. Completely unflustered, unperturbed, and—was that a dagger in his shoulder? There was ash dotting his hair with flecks of grey.

Lucifer stalked around Chloe to claim the stool, leaning back and bracing himself on the counter behind him. That was definitely a dagger in his shoulder; he winced with the movement. "The soul you're looking for is Robert Damante. He died last year. Really, Detective, I thought you would have found him by now." Lucifer blinked, then offered a charming smile to Ella. "Hello, Miss Lopez. Keeping the Detective on the straight and narrow I trust?"

"Uh." Chloe could practically see Ella's brain playing catch-up. "Yep. Someone has to, Mr. Consultant who-just-appeared-out-of-thin-air-even-though-I'm-pretty-sure-that's-not-possible." Her smile wavered on her face. "You know you have a—" she gestured vaguely towards his shoulder. Lucifer looked at the offending knife obligingly, brow raising.

"I never would have guessed," he deadpanned. With his good arm, he brushed some of the ash from his hair. It floated gently to the floor. "Now, Detective, why isn't it that you've caught old Damante yet? He can't be terribly hard to miss—he's a walking corpse."

Right, a walking corpse. How could anyone miss that? "No one's seen a zombie around here, Luc…"

"Lucifer." He made a face. "It's really not that hard to say. And I'm looking at a zombie right now. You need to rest sometime, Detective. However you're staying awake can't be good for you."

"Wait. Wait, wait wait wait." Ella held up her hands. "Did you just say Lucifer? Like,  _Lucifer_  Lucifer?" Chloe grimaced. She'd forgotten to tell Ella who he was.

Lucifer smiled. "The one and—"

"Hey, guys," Dan said, entering the lab, "so I think some of the… oh. Uh." The door closed with a markedly loud click behind him.

"Daniel," Lucifer acknowledged.

Dan audibly swallowed. "You, uh, have… something in your… shoulder."

"Smart as they come, aren't you?" Lucifer rolled his eyes and sat up, again wincing as he moved. "As I was saying before Detective Douche barged in here, yes, Miss Lopez, that's me. Be not afraid and all that, not here for your soul because that's not in my control, et cetera et cetera, whatever's wrong in your life is not my fault, yada yada, the answer is forty-two, yes, I'd be happy to sleep with you, and that should about cover it." He focused his attention on Dan. "Now, I hope you were about to say something regarding Damante and why you haven't caught the man yet."

"Uh, no. Not exactly. Who's Damante?"

"You lot are useless," Lucifer said.

"No, we're not." Either Ella's energy or Lucifer randomly appearing out of nowhere had given Chloe at least some life. She crossed her arms and stared down the Devil. "We know how Damante's choosing his victims. We know where he's going to be for an hour every other night. What we don't know is what he looks like, because—contrary to whatever you're thinking—he's not walking around in some old body."

"Uh, Chloe—"

"Not now. We've been dealing with murders left and right, mountains of paperwork which you probably can't even comprehend, and so many bureaucratic hoops that the fact that this investigation is still inching forwards is a miracle in and of itself." Chloe rubbed some of the blurriness from her eyes. "Now, since you seem to be the only one who knows what the hell's going on around here, you're going to stay a while and help out until we catch this Damante guy and whoever summoned him, got it?" Somewhere in there, she'd advanced on Lucifer until she was crowding him, practically pinning him to the stool and forcing him to look up at her. "You guilted me into letting you be the consultant on this case, so you better start acting like one."

"Chloe…"

Lucifer was smiling, something in her little rant apparently amusing to him. The skin around his eyes was crinkling in mirth. "Detective, I never did ask—what is it you desire?" What did she desire? Where was that coming from? She frowned.

"I want to catch this murderer. The murderers. I thought that was obvious."

"No, not what do you want right now, Detective." His smile was downright flirtatious, that's what it was. "What do you  _desire_. More than anything else, whatever you want more than anything—what is it? You can tell me."

"I want to catch this guy before he kills anyone else." What was he trying to get at? "That's it. Good people are dying because of this man, and I can't accept that. Maybe that's hard for you to understand, but that's enough of a reason for me." She stepped back, out of Lucifer's personal space and into a little protective bubble Dan had apparently been forming through all that, and crossed her arms. "Are you going to help deal with this or not?"

"Chloe, probably not a smart idea," Dan muttered.

Lucifer stood, once more the tallest person in the room. His smile was still playing on his face, and Chloe finally realized what must have been so amusing to him. Who was she to try and order him around? Her mouth went dry.

"You're a complicated one, Detective," Lucifer all but purred. A trick of the light made his eyes flash red. Dan flinched beside her. "I'll help. On one condition."

"What?" Well, at least her voice still sounded strong. That was something. He was probably going to ask something ridiculous—something she couldn't give. Not with good conscious.

"You let me help you with other cases after this."

"What?"

Lucifer shrugged, then broke off halfway through the motion to scowl at the dagger. He regained composure quickly. "Just that. I'm bored and you're interesting. Solving a few murders here and there would be a great pastime." He poked Dan's protective bubble, and it disintegrated immediately. Did he just waggle his eyebrows? Was that even a possible movement? "This could be la trial run. No harm, no foul: we catch the murderer, and we catch the summoner, and if you decide that you're too unnerved by me, or if I decide that this little bit of drama is too boring, then we go our separate ways."

Markedly, that didn't actually sound like a bad idea. There was a way out at the end. "If we do this, we play this by the book. The human book." Lucifer nodded agreeably.

"Chloe, there's got to be a catch."

"There's not," Lucifer promised.

Chloe sighed. "I don't think there is, Dan. Ella?"

"I mean…" Ella stared at Lucifer for a moment. "Well, no offense, Mr. Lucifer, sir, and I'm not saying you'd do this because I've always thought you get a bad rep, but if you wanted anything of ours, including us dead, you'd already have it, wouldn't you?"

"With some technicalities, yes. And no offense taken, Miss Lopez. Rather, I'm quite honored you think that about me." Ella smiled nervously.

"Fine," Chloe said. Ella seemed like she agreed with her, and that was all she needed to hear. "I can work with that. With you. For now."

"Lovely! When do we start?" He made as if to go for the bullpen and her desk, but Chloe stopped him before he could leave the lab. She released his arm immediately.

"We start," she said, "with getting rid of that dagger." The little flash of surprise that ran across Lucifer's admittedly handsome face made that declaration worth it. He shouldn't be surprised that someone was trying to look out for him. "We're partners for this, and I can't have you walking around hurt. Any reason you're going around with that in you?"

Lucifer sat back down on the stool, flirtatious smile gone and exchanged for something far more open. "I'm not particularly inclined to trust anyone downstairs to not shove it in farther."

"What about Maze?" Dan asked. Lucifer shook his head. "Why not? She's your right-hand demon."

"Yes, and my left-hand demon had apparently been planning to overthrow me for the past few millennia," Lucifer snapped. It wasn't a trick of the light: his eyes were distinctly red. And appeared to be burning like lava. Hellfire. Lovely. "Pardon, if I'm slightly paranoid." He took a deep breath, and his eyes returned to their more familiar dark brown. Calmer, he said, "do you lot have bandages around here? I won't bleed over much once we pull it out, but I would rather not go about with a lovely hole in my shoulder."

"I've got a first aid kit and duct tape," Ella volunteered. "But it probably won't do much for a knife wound. You'll need stitches for that."

"Anything will do." Lucifer reached behind himself and grabbed the hilt of the dagger. He pulled it out without bothering to give himself a countdown. Ella ducked away to grab those supplies. "You said you know where Damante is going to be?" He shed his ruined blazer and began unbuttoning his shirt.

Chloe swallowed. That shirt was not supposed to be that red. "He attends a Summoner's Anonymous meeting every night. We've asked SA to give us the attendee list for that building, but they're refusing." Ella returned and offered Lucifer a handful of damp towels and a spool of medical wrap. "We would go into the meeting ourselves, but since none of us know what he looks like—since we didn't even have a name until you showed up—we haven't been able to."

Lucifer wiped himself off. True to his word, he wasn't bleeding much, especially for the size of the wound, but it was still distinctly unhealthy. "Why don't you and I attend one of those SA meetings tonight?" He set the rags aside and began wrapping himself up. "Physical form regardless, I'll know what he looks like." He smiled again. "And, trust me, he'll know me."

* * *

After several hours of back-and-forth debate, both Chloe and Dan gave in to Lucifer's suggestion. Another phrase Chloe never thought she would think with only mild trepidation.

"Go over the plan again," Chloe said. She was in the back of the van with Dan and Lucifer, fussing over Lucifer's microphone while Dan messed with hers.

"Detective, really," Lucifer groused. "This is the fifth time. And I assure you: my memory is unfortunately impeccable."

"Just, do it again." She pulled down the back of his new button-down (where he'd gotten it from, she had no idea) and he shrugged back into his blazer. Again, where he'd gotten one from without a massive hole in the shoulder, she didn't know. She wasn't sure if she wanted to know.

"You go into the meeting on time. When the meeting begins and everyone is there, you tell me. I come in late, we see who tries to escape, I see if Damante is there, and after we catch the little bugger we carry on back to your house and have a fantastic—"

"Rules," Chloe said. Lucifer pouted. "Anything else?"

"Daniel here will remain in the van as backup, although why I would need back up I don't understand." He adjusted his cufflinks. "I'm not supposed to do anything infernal, celestial, or what-have-you, and I'm certainly not supposed to scare anyone. Although, me, scary?"

"Yeah, you're pretty scary, man." Dan cupped his hands over his mouth and headset microphone. "Can you both still hear me?" His voice came in relatively clearly over the earwig, and Chloe nodded. They both looked at Lucifer.

"While I appreciate your voice, Daniel, in certain situations I would much rather have the Detective whispering nothings into my ear."

"That wasn't the question," Dan muttered.

"Get your head out of the gutter, Lucif…" Chloe still couldn't quite bring herself to say it. Wire him up with a microphone, sure, but say his name?

"Lucifer. And, Detective, I am the gutter."

"Can you hear me or not?" Dan somehow managed to whisper shout into his microphone loud enough for it be somewhat painful.

"Yes, I can bloody hear you!"

Dan's watch alarm beeped; it was time for Chloe to head in. She started towards the backdoor, but before she opened it, she turned to face both men. Specifically, Lucifer. "Listen to Dan, okay? We can't mess this up."

"Very well."

Chloe hoped she could trust Lucifer, then decided it was a relatively moot point by now, and her thoughts drifted to whether or not she could trust Lucifer not to mess with Dan too much, and determined that was also irrelevant now. She stepped out of the van and into the dusk air, making quickly for the library in front of her.

The SA meeting was being held in the basement, room B103. And, Chloe was surprised to find as she entered the slightly-too-cool room, it was markedly large, almost like a small function room. There was a ring of seats facing inwards with a few spares behind them just in case of overflow and a pot of coffee on a table with some prepackaged cookies. There was an exit at the far side of the room—a possible escape for Damante if he made her. If he made her, and when he made Lucifer. A handful of people were milling around, drinking coffee, some talking with each other, or, in two peoples' case, already seated and people watching. Oddly, Chloe realized she recognized a handful of people there from cases Dan had worked—that he might be recognized within the community was why he wasn't attending the group.

"Hi, there!" A cheerful-looking middle-aged woman came up to Chloe. "You're a new face around here."

"I am, yeah." Whatever Dan and Lucifer were arguing about in the van which Chloe had tuned out quieted down as they realized that she was talking. "I'm kind of new to the whole scene." Chloe gave the woman an insecure smile, and the woman nodded.

"Well, you can call me Julie. If you want some coffee or cookies, now's your chance." Chloe politely declined, and Julie led them over to the chair circle. She sat next to Julie. "We're going to start in just a minute or two, so what I would recommend is listening to the first few people, then once you're feeling a bit more comfortable, just raise your hand to add yourself to the queue." Other people, apparently seeing Julie sit, likewise began taking their places. "I'm the facilitator for this group, so I'll let you know when it comes your turn. Mind, you don't need to share; sometimes all you need to do is listen. We have a few people like that. Whatever helps you the most."

"Thanks." She and Julie settled into a comfortable silence. In the background, Dan and Lucifer restarted their bickering (or, in Lucifer's case, innuendos).

The seats in the main circle were all filled once everyone was seated, with two people in the sporadic seats just behind the main circle. Lucifer, when he came in, would be able to take one of those relatively unobtrusively.

"Alrighty, looks like everyone's settled!" Julie clapped her hands together and leant forwards, making eye-contact with everyone in the room. "I'm glad you all made it tonight. We'll probably have one or two stragglers, and we definitely have one or two new faces, which is fantastic. Welcome to Summoners Anonymous group A-A-X. Would anyone like to start off tonight?" Two people raised their hands, and Julie nodded at the first one, a man who looked to be in his twenties.

"Hi, everyone." The group gave an obligatory 'hi' back. "I'm Mike. I'm not new to the summoning scene, but it's still hard with my family, you know? They really don't support me, even though I'm just trying to protect them. I don't have anyone to talk to about any of this because they all just shoot me down, you know?" Mike wrung his hands. "It's just disheartening. This is something I'm interested in, and they swore up and down they'd always have my back, and I think it's just the continued disappointment that no, they're not there for me, that gets me."

When it appeared that Mike was done talking, Julie nodded towards the other man who had raised his hand in the beginning, and he began confessing why he was there. A few people would raise their hands at odd intervals, and Julie navigated the group to each one of them in turn. After some time, and after three stragglers came in, Chloe raised her hand to join the queue. She had to get Lucifer to come on in sooner or later now that it looked like everyone was there.

Eventually, it came Chloe's turn, and she twisted her watch around in a show of nervousness. "Hi." The group returned the hi. "I'm Chloe. I'm new to, well, uh, this whole scene." A nervous smile here. "I really shouldn't be. My family's very anti-summoning, and, I mean, I guess I am too, sort of, but I've still learned how." A few members of the group nodded sympathetically. Possibly, they were people who fit Damante's victim profile. "I'm pretty well estranged at this point, even though I only began the other week. And, while I think it's a worthwhile and exciting study, I guess it's just been ingrained in me to resent summoning and summoners." Chloe swallowed and rubbed her watch again. "I mean, I know I shouldn't, because I know I genuinely can't, but every time I summon a minor demon, I feel like I'm summoning the devil himself." Chloe heard a soft, 'that's my cue, Detective Douche' over the earwig. "It's stupid, and I hope to get past this because maybe I'm scared, but I think I just need to talk—say it out loud. So, thanks."

Julie gently clapped her on the shoulder before directing the conversation to the next person. Lucifer came in towards the tail end of the woman's confession. It would have been the tail end, if she hadn't petered out when she saw the newcomer to the room. In Lucifer's defense, his entrance was about as unobtrusive as he could make it: quiet, and quite inclined to just sit down. Not that he minded being at the center of attention. Oh, no: he looked like he was positively preening with everyone focused on him. Still, Chloe didn't miss how his eyes darted around the circle. She didn't miss how they settled on Mike, who had frozen as soon as Lucifer had entered.

"Hello, Robert," Lucifer said, voice again a bedroom whisper (but it seemed to take that tone more often than not), "have you missed me?"

Mike—Robert Damante—lurched to his feet. His chair clattered back, the thin carpet turning the clang into a muted thud. "You… you can't be here!" He swept up the fallen chair and brandished it at Lucifer as a combination sword and shield. "Monster!" Damante began backing away, eyes wide enough for Colonel Prescott to shoot at. Lucifer, for his part, appeared thoroughly unimpressed.

"Come on, Robert." Lucifer's smile could only aptly be described as lecherous. He took a step towards Damante. Half the assembly stood to face him. Lucifer paused, that leeching delight quickly turning to bafflement.

"Sir," Julie said, voice calm and authoritative. Still, she sounded slightly dazed. "I need to ask you to leave." She stood. "You're being very disruptive, and well, we really can't have that here, sir."

"Disruptive?" Lucifer repeated. He had a very expressive face, Chloe decided. Very pretty, too—not that that was actually what she was thinking about right then, and certainly not about  _him_. "Very well. Robert and I will leave immediately."

"It's a summon gone wrong!" Damante's sob was half-convincing. If Chloe hadn't known who he was, she would have believed him. The rest of the circle stood up, Chloe with them for anonymity's sake, and all revealed summoning, banishing, and protection paraphernalia. "Please, help me! He's going to kill me."

Lucifer raised his hands slightly, attempting to project some measure of innocence—innocence which was promptly defeated by the slightly pouty smile hanging from his face. It struck Chloe then, in the middle of the rise of hostilities, that she was running off the Devil's word. How did she know he was telling the truth, that Mike, that quivering mess in the corner, was Damante? How was that kid supposed to be a serial killer?

"Chloe, do you need backup?" That was Dan over the earwig, operating from sound alone.

19 disenchanted summoners on varying facets of the morality circle. One terrified maybe-escaped maybe-normal human. One King of Hell. One detective undercover.

The room shattered into entrapment circles.

Damante's corner glowed in protective spheres. Movement everywhere. Latin, Greek, Sumerian, shouts in languages Chloe couldn't understand, more in languages she couldn't identify. Ripples of light and power, whirlwinds of chalk patterns, all against Lucifer. Lucifer, who, when the light finally died, when the hair stopped swirling, was more bothered by straightening his cufflinks than the attacks which would have knocked a lesser demon or angel back to kingdom come multiple times over. She and Lucifer were the points of stillness anchoring the chaos. Still, as the summoners stared and roused themselves for another assault. Still.

Then they weren't.

A hot hand wrapped around Chloe's neck, the other constricting her arms and torso. She could breathe. She wasn't in pain. Stubble dug into her forehead and rubbed her hair. "Pardon me, Detective." Lucifer's low voice, seductive over apologetic, in her ear. Dan in the other. God, she should have seen this coming. Lucifer manhandled her around the room. How the hell had he gone from the center to her without her noticing? How the hell had she been stupid enough to think Lucifer would actually help them? Dan was going to have to explain this to Trixie. Oh, God. Trixie.

Chloe jerked away. His grip was unyielding. People were still shouting, but the lights—the banishments—had fallen. She kicked him. Struggled against him. Trixie. Tried headbutting him. Anything. There was no give. Not a hint that he'd even felt her attempts to break free. The only thing that shifted between them were his clothes as she squirmed. She felt like a child's favorite toy: inanimate, powerless, and always in hand.

"You let her go," Julie hissed. Chloe would have shouted in agreement if she had use of her vocal cords at the moment. Lucifer lifted her off her feet and turned so that they were both facing her. Child's toy. At least she could still breathe. Damante, over in the corner, was swathed in protective spheres. Lucifer's breath tickled the hairs on her Chloe's head, and for a split moment, she wondered why, seeing as he was so inclined to haul her around and use her as a hostage, he wasn't actually hurting her. "You let her go right now."

Lucifer adjusted his grip so that he was cupping her chin instead of her neck. She still couldn't speak, and it certainly wasn't comfortable, but it didn't… hurt. It didn't hurt. He wasn't hurting her. What the hell?

"Get rid of those protective enchantments, and then of course." She could feel him smiling. "Anything you desire." Julie faltered, star-eyes, for lack of a better term, overtaking her. But she pushed back, that woman, and regained herself.

"What the hell is going on in there?" Dan again.

"We're not going to let you take Mike and kill him," Julie said. She scowled. "We're not going to let you hurt one of our own."

"He's not one of your own, love." Lucifer swept his eyes across the room, stubble tugging on Chloe's hair and loosening some of it from her bun. "He's been in Hell since last year. Staged a little breakout the other day, didn't you Robert? With good old Malphas?"

"I don't know what you're talking about," Mike-Damante said. His voice wavered. Chloe squirmed again; Lucifer still held her fast. She was going to give him an earful if she survived this.

"Don't lie to me."

The crowd twitched away, whether from the fact that right then, Lucifer had sounded entirely inhuman, or from the fact that just for a moment, like at the initial crime scene, he'd let the mask over his presence slip away, Chloe was unsure.

"I don't know what you're talking about!"

The presence mask disappeared. Gone in its entirety. She couldn't breathe. Not because of his grip, but because of him. She couldn't move. She had to run. Run. But she couldn't. She couldn't move, she couldn't breathe, her heart was going to break free, air and logic and thought and reason unnecessary because she had to get away. She had to get away.

"I don't like  _liars_ , Robert." Run. Somehow, run. She was paralyzed. Immobile. Why? It was holding her. Oh, God. It was holding her. It? No. No, he. He was holding her. "Do you know what happens to demons who lie to me, Robert?" They were moving forward. Towards the protective spheres. She was moving because it was carrying her. No, not it. He. Lucifer. Get it together. Keep it together. Breathe. "Do you know what happened to Malphas, Robert?" Breathe, and think. They were at the edge of the outermost protective shell. "He was one of my favorite demons, Robert, and he lied to me." She was here. Why was she here? She was here to catch a murderer—she was here to catch Robert Damante. She had asked Lucifer for help. That wasn't right. She had ordered he help. Breathe. Deep. Lungs worked, heart raced, thoughts continued. Lucifer advanced through the barriers, shattering them with each slightest touch. "I'm sure you knew that already. You were his ward." They were within arm's reach of Damante. Breathe. He was going to hurt him. Torture him, maybe. Worse. She couldn't move her jaw; Lucifer's hand was too firm. He set her aside like a castoff toy and lifted Damante into the air. Now. Now, Chloe.

"Lucifer!" He didn't look human. Breathe. Okay. Red, burnt. Okay. Breathe. No horns. No tail. Okay. This was fine. This was fine. "Lucifer, put him down!" She could panic later.

He turned his head towards her. His eyes were burning, too. But she knew that. She knew that from earlier. Hellfire. Enrapturing, captivating… Chloe focused on his nose.

"Put him down, Lucifer." Gentle, like talking down someone with a gun. Like coaxing a wild animal. Gentle, but firm. Breathe. "Put him down and let these people go." Damante kicked uselessly at the air as Lucifer continued to hold him well off the ground. "You don't want to hurt them."

"Why not?" Response. That was good—that was very good. Reasoning with the—she wasn't going to think about that right now.

"You didn't hurt me."

Another pause. Then: no more red. Chloe withheld her sigh of relief. He was still holding Damante firmly off the ground, but no red meant that she was getting through to him. Probably.

"I don't want to hurt you."

Chloe nodded. She could breathe properly again. She didn't feel the need to sprint from the room at full speed, or to draw her gun, or to compromise her cover more than she already had.

"You don't want to hurt any of them, either." Chloe gestured vaguely towards the group, all of whom were on the floor in the corners of the room. They still weren't moving, and she hoped they would be alright, but that wasn't her primary concern right now. Lucifer followed her gesture and looked around. "Put him down."

Lucifer turned his attention back to her, and Chloe remembered to breathe. She remembered to stay calm. His arm, slowly, began lowering Damante to the ground. "You're not frightened." His voice was soft, almost delicate, in its whisper. He was confused, she realized.

"LAPD!" Dan shouted. Thank God. Lucifer and Chloe both turned to face him, Lucifer dragging Damante with him. The man was somehow still awake. Chloe caught Dan's eye as he was taking in the situation, shaking her head some—the group didn't know who she was. Lucifer caught the message.

"Here's your murderer, Detective." Lucifer shoved Damante across the room. Dan barely caught him before they both tumbled to the ground. "Isn't that right, Robert? You're the murderer."

Damante's voice was gone, but he nodded. He nodded so hard Chloe feared for his spine.

"He's mine when you're done."

Chloe found Lucifer focused on her again. He was appraising her like she was some choice cut of meat or odd curiosity he'd never encountered before. Chloe crossed her arms and stared right back. She could freak out later. He rolled his shoulders and disappeared in a feathery 'whumpf.'

"Are you alright, uh, ma'am?" Dan asked as he handcuffed Damante. Was she alright? Her hands were shaking. Her heart was pounding and she couldn't hold still. Her breathing was remarkably steady. Was she alright?

"I'm…" Chloe licked her lips. "I'm good." Yeah. She nodded, trying to convince herself. She was fine. Everything was fine. They had the suspect—they had the murderer—and no one was injured. Shocked and scared, but not injured, and everything was just fine. She'd stared down the Devil himself and she was alright. She was alive, unharmed, and sane.

"… I'm good."


	7. Chapter 7

“I’m not some messenger,” Mazikeen said by way of greeting. Lucifer paced between the black columns of one of Dis’ ramparts, weaving in and out between them. They supported nothing but the atmosphere, particularly fiery days having burnt them in places and lightened their color with grey and brown ash and char marks. “I’m not going back up there. If you have something to say to Decker, then you deal with it.” Maze fell into step next to him, walking on the outermost side of the columns. She didn’t bother weaving through them with him.

“And?” Lucifer prompted.

The grounds around them were quiet. Relatively quiet. About as quiet as they ever were in Hell. There were the usual screams and chirps and shouts, and the general ruckus city-side as bands of demons occasionally fought each other’s wits with the Game of Forms, but nothing unusually brutal. No wartime fighting; no assassins; no winged rhinoceroses falling from the sky. Hell was back.

“And,” Mazikeen said, huffing, “we caught the summoner. Some twerp named Randel Pearlie. I wanted to take him down with me and Usagoo, but Decker wouldn’t let me.” She spat over the edge of the rampart into the city. “She insisted on taking him to the precinct to ‘interrogate’ him. Like she knows how to interrogate something.”

“And Robert Damante?” A winged demon lazily tossed some soul into the air outside Dis’ walls, and Lucifer watched as it caught fire and fell screaming back to the ground.

“Usagoo recognized what remained of the original body; Vassago has the body’s soul.” That was good. “I’m not dealing with that mess.”

“I don’t expect you to.” Lucifer stepped through the columns to lean against the wall. He stared down over the city, watching vague masses of demons crash into each other and the walls as they carried on to their destinations. The few who saw him looking made it a point to turn away and scurry in the other direction. They had a healthy sense of fear of him. They reacted. They responded properly. Why hadn’t she?

She was complicated. Lucifer knew that. He couldn’t draw out her desires, couldn’t will her to do anything, not that he’d tried particularly hard. But there were complicated people all throughout the planes and time, and they all feared him. But she—she hadn’t. He’d shown her his face, and she hadn’t screamed. She hadn’t run. She hadn’t done anything except talk to him.

Maze scoffed. “You’re brooding. Over a human.”

“And you’ve made friends with a human spawn.” Down below, down the dark walls, the crowd crested against the buildings and trickled through the streets. “Your point?”

“You shouldn’t be so preoccupied with one little human.”

Lucifer ran his hands along the rough stonework. “Is there anything else I shouldn’t do, Mazikeen?” When she was silent, Lucifer looked over his shoulder to her. “Rule Hell, perhaps?” She bristled. “Trust you?”

Mazikeen snarled. “I’m not Malphas. Don’t compare me to that feathered dick.”

Lucifer shrugged and continued fiddling with the stones even as he went back to surveying the cityscape. “Check on Treachery. I want to know how Sytry is handling his new responsibilities.” He could practically hear her mock bow before she left.

Lucifer was willing to concede to himself that Mazikeen was correct—that he shouldn’t be so preoccupied with one human—but he had a reputation to uphold. Someone down below began bouncing a ball-shaped demon off the wall. The distant ‘thud,’ ‘thud,’ ‘thud,’ of it carried up through the stones and trembled into Lucifer’s fingers. He could redesign Dis again. It was presently formed in the manner of the neoclassicists, but a bit of change could be good. He rested his head on his hand. He should ask someone fun to do it, like Borromini, or maybe Schulter.

Lucifer began walking back to his throne room, once again weaving between the columns and taking his time. Everything was sorted, all memos sent out, most rebellions halted, and a healthy sense of fear of him reinstalled in the demons below. There was nothing left to do except be bored for the next few centuries again. And to redesign Dis, but that wouldn’t take long at all. They could start with these columns and that bloody portal.

That bloody portal wasn’t supposed to be there. It was also coming towards him. Huh.

Tentatively, Lucifer stuck his hand through. It felt like there was open space on the other side, the air considerably cooler than Hell’s. He withdrew, looking around to see if anyone was watching. He could see no one between the columns or in the air, and he allowed the portal to draw closer. When a scrawny human stuck his entire torso through, Lucifer raised an eyebrow. The human grabbed his jacket and hauled him back through the portal.

Earth. Definitely earth. And this bloody human with his grubby little hands with broken handcuffs around his wrists was attached to Lucifer’s jacket. Lucifer backhanded the man off of him; the fellow went sprawling, landing roughly at the edge of a crowd. A crowd, curiously, of police. The man scooted away and to his feet with a maniacal sort of grin tearing apart his face. Fortunately, the man hadn’t left any marks on Lucifer’s suit. Lucifer still dusted himself off and straightened his cufflinks. This place almost looked familiar.

“Are you going to leave that open?” Lucifer asked, indicating towards the portal. “Dad knows what could come through that thing.”

“I’ve done it,” the man said. His grin looked positively painful. “I’ve actually done it.”

Lucifer’s lips quirked upwards. “Yes, yes, congratulations for whatever you’ve done.” There was what appeared to be a lab off to once corner and plenty of paper covered desks between here and there. A set of stairs was directly opposite Lucifer. “What is it you’re meant to have done?” He focused back on the man. “Because, while I certainly commend you for opening a portal to Hell, that happens more than one would think.”

“I summoned you!” The man… summoned him?

“You opened a portal and dragged me through,” Lucifer corrected. “I hardly think that counts as summoning me.” Two more officers sprinted down the stairs. Both of whom, Lucifer realized, he knew. He grinned. “Detective and Detective Douche!”

Dan skidded to a halt and almost fell down the stairs. He froze for a second, but then managed an awkward wave. “Hey.” Detective Decker was far more elegant in her halt. The slightly deluded not-summoner scowled.

“Do you know who this miscreant is?” Lucifer grabbed the not-summoner and pulled him in front of himself so that Dan and Chloe could see the man better. “He seems to believe he summoned me.”

“Uh.” Right, how could Lucifer keep forgetting Dan’s eloquence? Why, also, wasn’t it the Detective that answered him? “You remember Damante?”

“Of course I remember Damante.” The not-summoner tried to squirm out of Lucifer’s grasp, but Lucifer held fast and gave him a slight shake. “Mike Manning’s soul is in Asphodel, and I’d be delighted to have Vassago and Usagoo return it to its proper location and fix up the body some when you’re finished with Damante.”

Dan, for lack of anything better, nodded. “So, that’s Randel Pearlie, the guy who summoned Damante.” This was Pearlie?

Lucifer spun Pearlie around, stooping to properly look at the human. “You don’t look like much, do you? No sense of fashion about you, either.” Pearlie continued scowling, an expression which almost looked as painful on him as that grin. “Yet, somehow, you convinced Mal to work with you?”

“We discovered we were of a similar mind,” Pearlie said. He seemed proud of that, if the little glint in his eyes and the puffing of chest was anything to go by. “With my talent and his knowledge, we could do what had never been done before.”

“What for?” Lucifer asked, releasing Pearlie. “Fame?” Pearlie smiled, stepping back for some personal space. Got it in one, how predictable. “If you desire fame, opening a portal to Hell surrounded by police who want your head is not particularly an intelligent way of getting it, is it, Mr. Pearlie?” Thinking of that portal… Lucifer closed it with his free hand, not bothering to look as he did so. It disappeared into itself immediately.

“I’m not going to get caught by them.”

“Oh?” Points for bravado, Lucifer supposed. There were demons doing worse in that department. “You’re surrounded and your little portal is closed.”

“You’re going to help me.”

Lucifer smiled. “I’m going to help you?” he repeated. “Why would I do that? Detective Douche, why would I help him?” Dan shrugged, and Chloe began hiding a smile. Lucifer offered her one of his own before returning to business.

“Because I summoned you!” Oh, little Pearlie was becoming frustrated. “Because I order you to!”

“You… order me?” Well endowed in bravado and hubris. How cute. “I don’t take kindly to being ordered, Mr. Pearlie.” A spot of something grey caught Lucifer’s eyes, and he swept the piece of ash off of his shoulder. “I’m not going to help you, Mr. Pearlie. I am, however, looking forward to visiting you when you die. Officers?” The officers looked amongst each other and stared at him. Lucifer sighed. “Well, go on. Arrest—”

Lucifer’s hand flew to his face.

“—him.”

He stared, cross-eyed, at the dagger floating inches from his face. Malphas’ third dagger. One of the ones he’d given the demon, one of the ones he’d had specially made. Lucifer looked beyond the dagger to Pearlie. Now, wasn’t that a betrayal? Even in death, Malphas’ gifts kept on giving. Lucifer let the dagger float in front of him. He let it float there as he turned his will to Pearlie and forced him to the floor. He let it float there as he forced the man to curl into a ball, stuck in something tighter than any fetal position. He let it float there as he whisked the air from Pearlie’s lungs and cut the man’s scream of pain in two.

Lucifer pulled the dagger from the air with his free hand and allowed Pearlie to breathe again after a few seconds. Those desperate and weak gasps for breath were the only noise in the room.

“Daniel,” Lucifer called, breaking that silence. Dan shoved his way down the stairs and through the crowd. Lucifer relaxed the pressure he was holding to Pearlie once Dan snapped a new set of handcuffs around Pearlie’s wrists. The originals had snapped. These, Lucifer noted, were warded.

“Thanks, man,” Dan said, hauling Pearlie to his feet and half-marching, half-supporting him through the officers. They cleared a vague path through their numbers, although they were more focused on him than on that miscreant.

Lucifer smiled. “Well, if that’s all, I’ll take my leave before I melt your brains any further.” He nodded at the Detective, who was still standing on the stairs. She frowned.

“You’re not going anywhere,” the Detective said. She crossed her arms and stared him down. “We need to talk, and we can’t do that if you keep poofing out on me.”

“’Poofing… out,’ Detective?”

“Mm. Conference room.” She pointed at a door up the stairs and to her right. “Right now.” She didn’t wait for him to follow her, and Lucifer chuckled. Not afraid of him, not afraid to get in his face, not afraid to order him… screw what Maze thought, he was going to become quite invested in this little detective.

The conference room, once he convinced the officers to part their ranks for him, was quite bland. As bland as any Lucifer had ever entered. In its middling defense, there were windows everywhere, which did eliminate almost all sense of privacy given that the shades were up. The Detective stood near the door; she closed it behind him.

“What was the rule about scaring people?” she demanded. Lucifer’s ready dirty joke faltered on his lips. “The rule from the SA meeting. What was it?”

“I wasn’t supposed to scare anyone,” Lucifer said. It took him a moment, brain having to do a full stop and redirect.

“Uh huh. And how about the other bits before that part?” The other bits..?

“I… wasn’t supposed to do anything remotely inhuman?” Lucifer pulled out one of the seats and sat down. “Detective—”

“Ah.” She held up a finger and Lucifer closed his mouth. “How about the plan. What was the plan?”

“Detect—”

“The plan.”

“You were to go in, then call me in, then we quietly find Damante.” Lucifer leant forwards. “You can’t blame him causing a disturbance on me, Detective.”

“No.” She began pacing. “But not only did you break all those rules you just mentioned, you went off the plan!” He went off the plan? He’d entered quietly, dealt with the issue, and left. Sure, he’d gone off-plan after Damante freaked out, but that wasn’t his fault. That was him adapting.

“Det—”

“Lucifer.”

Lucifer held his tongue again. Whatever he had done, she was genuinely unhappy.

Chloe sighed. “I know,” she said. “I know. You’re not used to this—following the rules, sticking to the plan. But—damn it!—if you’re going to go ahead and start manhandling your partner, you need to let them know! God, I didn’t know what you were doing! I thought you were going to kill me.” Chloe swallowed and took a deep breath. Kill her? She thought he’d been about to kill her? “How would Dan have explained that to Trixie?”

“I wouldn’t hurt you, Detective.”

Chloe nodded, her eyes shut. He wouldn’t dream of hurting her. “I know. I know that now.” She ran her hands through her hair, tucking loose strands behind her ears. “But you can’t just up and do that to someone. If you’re going to do something unexpected that they maybe might find threatening, you need to let them know before, okay?” He had scared her. Not with his eyes, or his face, or his anger, but because he’d surprised her. “Do you understand?”

“I understand, Detective.” He understood perfectly well. “I won’t bother you again.”

“What? No.”

Lucifer was halfway to his feet. He ended up back in the chair. No?

Chloe frowned. “Look, Lucifer—this wasn’t okay, alright? I freaked out for a minute, and you got too emotional, okay?” He was… too emotional? Chloe rolled her eyes and sat down opposite of him. “Don’t get that angry next time.”

“Next time?” Lucifer echoed. Chloe nodded.

“Next time. The deal was until I couldn’t work with you, or you were bored, or something, right?” Lucifer nodded. It hadn’t been a deal, but that was a decent summary. “Well, I can work with you. I can work with you if you stick to the plan next time, if you never go off-script like that again. Follow my lead.”

“Why?” Lucifer settled back into his chair but made sure to keep eye contact. She had lovely eyes. Lucifer shook his head, frowning. “Why aren’t you afraid?”

Chloe drummed her fingers against the tabletop. “I guess… I guess I think that against everyone telling me otherwise, I think that you’re a good man. I think that you’ll have my back. I think I can work with you.” She…

“You think, Detective?”

Chloe nodded, beginning to smile. “I think.” She thought this could work. She wasn’t scared. She… she trusted him. Once more, Lucifer found himself mimicking her. Mimicking her smile, and this time, her sentiments.

Softly, he said, “I think so, too.” And he hoped it was true.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Last chapter!  
> Thanks to all my readers (and a big thanks to all the commenters)!


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